Pages

Friday, August 14, 2009

An Evening of Engineering

Note - this blog is automatically imported into facebook, but unfortunately it loses some formatting in the process. Click here to visit the real thing.

I didn't do anything particularly exciting yesterday afternoon/evening; after returning from school, I went to the mall to get some groceries, made dinner, went back to the mall to get some household stuff, and, well, here we are. By some fluke, however, I was faced with three separate challenges of engineering during this epic (boring) journey. This is their story.

I had met a fellow teacher at the Colombia version of Wal-Mart to help me shop (I didn't really need it, but it was very nice of her). Upon checking out and having all my new items bagged, she was sure I would take a cab, since I had bought about $100 worth of stuff, and $100 buys you a lot more in Colombia than it does in Canada. She thought there was no way I could make it home without some sort of automotive assistance.

Little did she know.


Engineering Problem #1, Solved.

Upon arriving home, I began to unload my new possessions, among them a sweet bridge-over-sink style dish rack.

Beautiful, ain't it?



SO WHY DOESN'T MINE LOOK LIKE THAT??!?!

The legs were meant to attach with the mechanism shown: the smaller cylinder was supposed to fit into the bigger one. However, this proved to be impossible on two of the four corners. Shoddy Colombian manufacturing I guess. We need some good old fashioned Vietnamese labour over here.


To solve this problem, I first tried the strategy employed by most when facing a challenge such as this:

That proved unsuccessful.

Next, I used my Engineering Skillz to brainstorm! I came up with the extremely complex and forward-thinking and engineery solution of getting something pointy and pointing it at the thing.



Easier said than done.

But, after literally minutes of hard work, it was finished. Engineering Problem #2, Solved.


Now, you're probably wondering about the third engineering challenge, as mentioned in the introduction. Well, after I thought of this idea for a blog post, I had to figure out how to set the timer on my camera!


Engineering Problem #3, Solved.


No comments:

Post a Comment