Inflated Hopes

Pitting their wits against competitors from some of the Southland’s major universities, Caltech engineering students took first prize in the Collegiate Technology Challenge held Thursday at Universal City. The contestants were asked to build a contraption that would inflate a 16-inch globe. Caltech’s winning entry included a couple of old shoes, an aquarium and the usual number of chutes, lines and pulleys, but ultimately used liquid nitrogen to compress the air needed to fill the globe. The winners share a $10,000 scholarship from competition sponsors, the accounting firm Coopers & Lybrand. The contest was part of the firm’s 1989 Technology Network Exchange conference.