Engineering Design Via Community Service Projects (CLOSED)

Course Description

A hands-on, intensive case study of an original engineered device or process that has been manufactured and is now in service. Students will recreate portions of the design using information presented in lectures, physical experimentation in an engineering lab, computer modeling, and field work. Technologies supporting or related to the product under study will be investigated, and students will have the opportunity to develop an original design on a smaller scale.

This summer the course will focus on the engineering response to Superstorm Sandy. The engineering case to be studied is the solar array deployed by Columbia engineering graduate students at St. Gertrude’s Church and Youth Center in Rockaway Beach, Queens, immediately after the storm. The church was operated as a volunteering center where donated goods and hot meals were distributed to Rockaway residents. The solar array provided power to lights, refrigerators, phone chargers, computers, and a temporary medical clinic housed inside the church. We will visit the site and experiment with solar energy and solar voltaic cells in the lab, and design a solar cell based lightwave communication system.

Instructor(s)