Engineering joy

When the late teacher emeritus Woodie Flowers SM ’68, MEng ’71, PhD ’73 was a trainee at MIT, a lot of his courses entailed paper-and-pencil workouts with fixed services. Blossoms had a fondness for making points, and for making them job. When he transitioned from pupil to instructor, he picked to bring this method right into his approach of direction and, in doing so, he assisted alter the means design trainees are informed– at MIT, and around the globe.

Flowers passed away in 2019, yet his tradition resides on, and the size of the instructional change he assisted to advance was extensive

In the 1970s, Flowers took control of direction of 2.70, currently called course 2.007 (Layout and Production I). The capstone program is one that several first-year trainees today expect taking, yet that had not been constantly the instance. Prior to Flowers took control of direction, course direction counted greatly on blackboard demos.

” Their concept of style at the time was to attract illustrations of components,” discusses Teacher Emeritus David Gossard PhD ’75, Flowers’ long time good friend and associate. “Woody had a various concept. Offer the whole course a package of products [and] a typical objective, which was to develop an equipment– to climb up a hillside, or grab golf spheres, or whatever it did– and make a competition from it. It was an amazing success. The children enjoyed it, the professors enjoyed it, the Institute enjoyed it. And over a duration of years, it ended up being, I believe it’s reasonable to state, an establishment.”

With Blossoms at the lead, 2.70 changed right into a project-based, get-your-hands-dirty, robotics-competition-focused experience. By all accounts, he additionally made the experience unbelievably enjoyable– something he valued in his very own life. He enjoyed sky diving and was usually seen rollerblading with the Infinite Hallway. The program, notified by his special design, went to the center of a change in design education and learning, and it rapidly assisted strengthen the Division of Mechanical Design’s track record for cutting-edge education and learning.

” A great deal of children had actually never ever gone back to square one and developed anything,” Flowers when informed The Boston World His expert, Robert Mann, had comparable ideas in a hands-on, modern-day rearing. Structure on Mann’s ideology, and including his very own method, Flowers took a breath brand-new life and gave a brand-new structure for “the MIT means” of mentor. This was a reinvigoration at the ideal area and the correct time that eventually had a worldwide butterfly impact on the appeal of scientific research, innovation, design, and mathematics (STEM) direction.

” Throughout the years talks had actually displaced the hands-on things, and Woodie brought it back,” states Sanjay Sarma, the Fred Ft Flowers (1941) and Daniel Ft Flowers (1941) Teacher in Mechanical Design. ” I can not think about a bachelor to have actually influenced the area of robotics and style in undergraduate, or secondary school, education and learning as high as Woodie.”

Flowers ended up being thinking about mechanical design and style at a young age, many thanks in big component to his moms and dads. His papa was a welder with a fondness for tinkering, developing, and structure, his mom was a grade school instructor. Blossoms matured taking points apart and placing them back with each other– a task which he appeared to think made trainees much better designers.

Talking in 2010 with InfiniteMIT, an electronic archive of Institute background implemented by the kindness of Jane and A. Neil Pappalardo ’64, Flowers shared a story concerning a trainee that had actually approved the job in her team of discovering whether an item of support steel rebar might be curved right into a limited loophole and function as a bearing.

” She entered laboratory and I existed early, and she had a somewhat curved item of rebar. It had actually been heated up– you might inform that it had actually been warm, and she was mosting likely to report that she actually can not do that, it simply type of does not function,” Flowers remembered. He recommended they attempt one more method.

” We headed out in the laboratory and I located one more huge steel bar and I located the most significant vice I might locate,” he proceeded. Blossoms cranked the rebar down versus the item of steel he was mosting likely to cover it about, after that took a four-pound sledgehammer to it. “My papa had a blacksmith pit, to ensure that knew to me. I covered [the rebar around the steel and] made a great bearing. As I end up the last impact, I searched for and 3 of the most effective trainees in the course– actually sharp individuals– were standing there with their jaw open. They would certainly never ever seen anybody struck an item of steel hard sufficient to simply mold and mildew it.”

He proceeded, “that natural understanding of the habits of auto mechanics is actually essential. It does not befall of the skies and it definitely does not appeared of a book, it comes with actual communication. I think I had actually been so fortunate due to the fact that when I ran into Castiglione’s theory concerning deflection of products, it type of made good sense.”

Program 2.70/ 2.007 is thought about a site course in design education and learning. It was just one of the initial hands-on courses to educate trainees not just just how to make a things, yet additionally just how to develop it and, by showing the worth of functional, project-based discovering and robotics competitors, it has actually affected the method taken by several various other programs. Today, it remains to establish trainees’ proficiency and self-esteem as style designers, with a focus on the innovative style procedure strengthened by application of physical regulations, effectiveness, and manufacturability.

Significantly, the program additionally worked as the motivation for growth of the FIRST Robotics program, which Flowers and developer Dean Kamen began in 1989. FIRST has programs for preschool with secondary school trainees and, to day, greater than 3.2 million young people from greater than 100 nations have actually taken part in FIRST competitors.

In the 1970s, the components set– or as Flowers lovingly described it, the “bag of scrap”– consisted of points like springtimes, tongue depressors, and elastic band. Blossoms’ other half Margaret remembers investing several evenings loading these sets and organizing advisees in their home. “We considered ourselves a group,” she states.

Today, along with making use of the set of mechanical components and products, trainees in 2.007 could establish 3D published parts, and they integrate electronic devices in their robotics for an independent part of the last competitors.

The springtime 2024 competitors, themed after Animation Network’s prominent computer animated sci-fi comedy “Rick and Morty,” included a spacecraf that trainees’ robotics might connect with for factors, barrels of “acid” where spheres might be accumulated and positioned in tubes, and video game items that admired legendary episodes. The last job needed the robotic to take a trip up a lift and send out a personality down a zipline.

In recent times, various other motifs have actually fixated jobs associated with tales varying from “Celebrity Wars” to ” Back to the Future” and “Wakanda Forever.” The 2022 motif, nevertheless, might have been one of the most touching motif to day: “Tradition,” a party of Flowers’ life and job.

“[Woodie] exposed, unambiguously, that developing, producing, setting up and developing points was enjoyable,” states Gossard. “It was probably the significance of design. There was delight in it.”

A variation of this short article shows up in the Springtime 2025 concern of MechE Links, the publication of the MIT Division of Mechanical Design.