Exhibiting Innovation

By AMANDA RICKER Chronicle Staff Writer

Based on the date, time, longitude and latitude that Gordon Nelson entered into a digital control box, three solar panels rotated and tilted to a position where they would catch the most sun.

SEAN SPERRY/CHRONICLE Montana State University engineering students Gordon Nelson, center right, and Boe Jensen, right, explain their Sun Tracking Solar Panel at the Engineering Design Fair on Thursday in the Strand Union Building. The panels were set to automatically update their position every 12 minutes.

“You’ll get 11.5 watts more on average out of these over the course of a day,” Nelson said of the sun-tracking solar panels that he and fellow Montana State University seniors Kristin Summers and Boe Jensen programmed.

Their project was one of many student innovations displayed Thursday at MSU’s Engineering Design Fair in the Strand Union Building.

Engineering students have put on the fair each year for about five years to give the public a glimpse of what they’re working on, said Vic Cundy, mechanical engineering professor. Many of the projects at the fair are “senior capstone projects,” the culmination of two semesters of class work.

Across the room from the solar panels, 10-year-old Max Armstrong filled a Dixie cup with BBs and held it a few centimeters beneath an electromagnet. Then, he slowly pulled the cup away from the BBs.

“When I let go, the balls were hanging there, just sort of floating,” said Armstrong, a home-schooled student who visited the fair to explore his interest in electrical engineering.

The electromagnet, created by seniors Eric Moog, Mike Inabnit and Eric Gowens, allows metal objects to hover in the air with a magnetic field created by electrical currents.

Sensors on either side of the electromagnet size up the metal object so that a machine can automatically adjust the electrical current needed to suspend the weight.

Once the objects are hovering beneath the electromagnet, the current can also be adjusted to make the mass move up and down.

The students’ electromagnet is meant as an educational tool. The National Science Foundation provided a grant for the students to build it.

“It’s just fun to see something hover,” Moog said.

Around 30 student projects were on display Thursday. Other projects included a camera designed to detect and photograph an aurora borealis, a robotic “micromouse” designed to find its way out of a maze, and a pulley device designed to help flip a heavy bed mattress.

Amanda Ricker can be reached at aricker@dailychronicle.com or 582-2628.

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