Kevin Noertker (left) and Marc Sells do a victory dance
in Millikan Pond after winning the final round of the ME72 contest.

Fluid Dynamics—from Millikan Pond to Formula One

As amphibious robots engaged in a desperate struggle, hundreds of people—including reporters from NBC, CBS, the Los Angeles Times and the Pasadena Star News—jostled for a better view from behind yellow caution tape strung around Caltech’s Millikan Pond. Eighteen students in a course innocuously titled “ME 72 ab: Engineering Design Laboratory” had been working toward this moment, the final round of their March 10 tournament, for 20 weeks.

Teams of two or three undergrads worked with identical kits of materials to design and build radio-controlled ’bots that could survive a 14-inch fall into the pond, scoop up floating balls, and deposit them into the red or blue team bin on the opposite bank, all within three minutes. (A sandpaper-covered ramp allowed the machines to crawl up out of the pond.) Most teams opted to build two boats: a small, nimble attack vehicle and a larger craft to gather as many balls as possible. The class was taught by Joe Shepherd (PhD ’81), the Johnson Professor of Aeronautics and professor of mechanical engineering; and Joel Burdick, professor of mechanical engineering and bioengineering.

During this, ME 72’s 25th annual double-elimination tournament and its first aquatic challenge, casualties mounted from the moment the vehicles leapt from the bank. One craft plunged into the water upside down—twice. One got stuck on the edge with two wheels hanging. But the strategic crux was the ramp. Sumo-style shoving matches broke out in the water at the ramp’s foot as teams tried to prevent their opponents from climbing out; whoever gained the high ground usually won.

While Newt makes a dash for the ramp, Salamander goes bow-to-bow with one of Colin Ely and Kevin Tjho's Professional Ball Handlers, which featured an Archimedes screw to lift balls into the scoring bin without leaving the pond. White balls were worth one point each; orange, three; and blue, minus two.

In the end, team Ramen and Cheesesteaks—named for dietary staples of members Marshall Grinstead and Edmond Wong—faced off in a shoving match with Newt N’ Salamander, Marc Sells and Kevin Noertker’s team. Nimble Newt raced to the top of the ramp and spun to block its opponent, which was scrabbling tenaciously up the slope. Salamander, the transport craft, attacked from the water. Motors whined, wheels spun, batteries drained—and time ran out.
Sells and Noertker’s victory leap into the pond clinched the story for the evening news. But history tells us that their triumph isn’t just a geeky human-interest story; it’s a portent. However humble the materials, however whimsical the challenge, ME 72 teaches the design process—from concept through building, testing, and refining—that governs engineering everywhere. Many alumni have drawn on similar Caltech preparation to revolutionize entire industries.

Consider Distinguished Alumnus Jim Hall, who, with his wife, just pledged $2 million to create the Jim and Sandy Hall Fund for Mechanical Engineering.

Armed with the 1957 model of the same BS in mechanical engineering that the ME 72 champions will earn this June, Hall started his own race-car company, Chaparral Racing Cars, and took on the titans of Formula One racing—Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Porsche, and Maserati—while still in his twenties. Chaparral drove design innovations on the circuit for two decades, culminating in 1980 when a Chaparral 2K driven by Johnny Rutherford took the pole position at the Indy 500 and then cruised to victory, leading the pack for 118 of the 200 laps. Hall has been on the covers of Sports Illustrated and Newsweek and is in three motor sports halls of fame.

Hall’s Caltech education taught him to see racing as a challenge in aerodynamics. He realized that pressing the car down into the track would improve its cornering speed, and he stunned the racing industry with innovations designed to create such a downforce: spoilers, air dams, movable wings, shaped undersides, skirts, and ducted fans that created a partial vacuum under the car.

The Halls’ gift helped kick off a $20 million ME fund-raising initiative last winter. Their names will grace a conference room planned for the soon-to-be-renovated Thomas Laboratory of Engineering; his name will also adorn the upgraded design and prototyping lab used by students in ME 72 and similar hands-on courses.

The first prototyping lab was built in Hall’s senior year. He missed being able to use its mills and lathes by months, and thus had to learn how to apply theory to practice on his own. “When I realized what was happening in the ME 72 course and what those guys were learning, I got excited about it,” he says. “When you get to do those things and see how things work and how they’re made, it really helps your thought process.”

Tom Tombrello, the Kenan Professor and professor of physics, often likens Caltech students to Formula One race cars, hand-crafted through close interactions with faculty. In that sense, Hall is back on the front lines building race cars again. As history repeats itself, perhaps Sells and Noertker will return to Caltech many years hence and dedicate the Newt N’ Salamander Laboratory. —AW