Un-Weird Science : Harvey Mudd Students Solve Some Real-World Problems

Feel ripped off by your auto mechanic? Nervous over the quality of your tap water? Worried about being hit in the head by debris from outer space?

You’d have felt better if you had been at an unusual science fair that college students in Claremont staged Tuesday for governmental agencies and major California firms.

Harvey Mudd College students hired to research those and 31 other perplexing issues for a year turned over their findings to sponsoring companies and organizations.

It was the 30th annual “projects day” at the tiny college 30 miles east of Los Angeles. And instead of handing in a term paper or thesis assigned by a professor, students in the engineering, math and computer departments turned in design work and research commissioned by organizations ranging from the auto club to NASA.

The college was paid $34,000 to cover the cost for each group of students that participated in the project. For their part, most students ended up with A’s. Some of the companies emerged with new designs and products worth $1 million or more.

Senior Matthew Meyers, 21, beamed when he heard that General Electric Nuclear Energy plans the worldwide sale of the computer program he and four classmates concocted to test the safety of reactor control rods.

The students’ method allows plants to continue generating power while checking for dangerous rod friction. The current method of shutting down a plant for two days of inspections costs about $1 million in lost revenues.

“We think we got our money’s worth,” GE project manager Anwar Alam said of the $34,000 stipend.

The Automobile Club of Southern California hired students to perform a computer analysis of repair shop work so that officials can more easily tell fraud from mechanics’ incompetence.

The Metropolitan Water District commissioned students to produce an easy method for predicting the quality of water at virtually every point along the 444-mile California Aqueduct. Lockheed Missile and Space Corp. asked students to analyze “impact velocities” for a project involving rocket propellant safety and impact detonation.

Pacific Bell had students study the technical and regulatory issues of turning leftover copper wire phone cables into power lines, once new fiber-optic lines become commonplace.

The students’ work “could have cost us 10 times what we’ve paid” if it were done by professionals, said Pamela Justin, a Pacific Bell technology consultant.

Some of the projects produced down to earth prototypes of new products. A team working for Loma Linda Medical Center came up with a device to monitor wear and tear on artificial hips and knees. Students working for McDonnell Douglas came up with a system for cleaning tubing.

Others were more high-flying.

Six students working on a non-breakable alternative to potentially dangerous fluorescent lights in the space shuttle designed a replacement made of 486 tiny light-emitting diodes.

“The challenge was to get a white light,” said senior Erika Kirchberger, 21.

“There are no white LEDs. We ended up combining 365 green ones, 104 orange ones and 17 blue ones to get white. We put in 1,500 hours on this--we finished Sunday night. NASA is very excited about it.”

College engineering department administrators say more than 1,200 students and 200 companies have teamed up since the projects program was started in 1965 as an alternative to traditional theoretical classroom work.

The college allows companies and organizations to retain all patents that come from student work, said professor Rich Phillips, chairman of the engineering department.

The U.S. Army registered six patents last year after students helped design a high-tech medics’ stretcher that can function as a miniature hospital operating room under battlefield conditions.

Col. William Wiesmann, who is in charge of trauma treatment research for the Army, said students’ contribution to the development of the enclosed, electronics-equipped stretcher is probably worth more than $750,000. He said the stretcher is expected to eventually be available for civilian rescue in disasters such as last week’s Oklahoma City bombing.

This time, Wiesmann commissioned students to help devise a sonar sensor-equipped glove that medics can place on victims’ chests to check for broken bones and collapsed lungs.

Inventive as ever, Todd Taylor’s team even came up with background noises such as the ear-piercing sound of artillery explosions, machine gun fire and screams of anguish while teammate Ian Leicht, 21, demonstrated the sensors Tuesday for Wiesmann.

Where did they get such realistic sound effects?

“From the first 18 seconds from a song by the group Metallica,” said Elizabeth Cornelius, 22.