McNicholas High School Intro to Engineering students show off their “shipped chips”. (From Left to Right) Back Row: Pierce Township Jeron Heil, Amelia resident AJ Walder, Batavia resident Evan Pour, Matt Cornell, Liz Beck. Front Row: Amelia resident Evan Kramer, Pierce Township resident Brian Cabell, Tianyu “Harry” Chen, and Goshen resident Ian Bodner.
This year McNicholas High School is offering Introduction to Engineering. The one semester class for Juniors and Seniors is designed to be a survey of the different branches of engineering for students thinking of pursuing engineering in college. In addition to field trips and speakers, students complete a hands-on project in each branch covered, to get an idea of the challenges faced in those fields.

For manufacturing engineering students were given the challenge of shipping a product in the safest, most cost effective package. Working in teams students were tasked with designing a package using the materials provided to safely ship a single potato chip to the school address. Their final grade was determined using a formula that took into account the condition of the chip, size, and mass of the package. The project seems deceptively simple, but by designing, manufacturing, and testing their packages they got a chance to see the external stresses that engineers must consider when developing a package or product design.

After the packages were shipped April 9th from Maysville, Kentucky, students were given the tracking number to follow the package’s progress. Eventually all the packages arrived at McNicholas, and were opened for evaluation. In the end students learned it wasn’t as easy as it looked – only 2 of the 9 boxes returned totally intact chips.