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March 14, 2005 Vol. 76,
no. 9S
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| AWARD-WINNING:
This team won second place in a student design contest for the "Sleeping
Bag Roller," which they're holding in their hands. From
left, ME senior Gustavo Gonzalez, ChemE senior Raquel Orozco, and
ME seniors Yessenia Lopez, Loucynda Escobar, and Abel Flores.
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Hispanic
Engineers and Scientists team wins second place for "Sleeping Bag
Roller" design
Rolling a sleeping bag is
a pain. It bunches. It comes undone. It doesn't fit in a stuff sack
because the roll is too big. A team from the Berkeley chapter of Hispanic
Engineers & Scientists (HES) agreed. What was needed, the team thought,
was a device to make rolling the bag easier. And so began an idea that
would nab them second place in the student product design contest at
the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers' National Technical and
Career Conference this past January in Dallas.
"We went through thousands of ideas before we landed on this one," says
Loucynda Escobar, an ME senior. "This is very simple, but that's the
beauty of it. Keep it simple."
The team began working on the project last September. They first interviewed
camping friends and acquaintances to find out their customers' needs.
People told them it had to be lightweight and portable. After three
weeks, they came up with a design that was a simple plastic bar with
knob-like handles. It looked like a baton that you twirled. You roll
the sleeping bag around the bar and when you're done, a handle pops
off and you pull the bar out.
The problem was how to temporarily attach the bar to the sleeping bag.
The girls on the team thought of clips, such as hair clips that would
clamp down on the sleeping bag. But they couldn't find clips that would
work. Then, after one brainstorming meeting, the team went to play softball.
The bat they used had grip tape. Raquel Orozco thought of using the
bat. They rolled a sleeping bag around the bat and the tape stuck to
the material.
"The bat worked very well," says Escobar. "But, despite that, people
we talked to didn't have much confidence that tape would work. So we
went back to the drawing board."
Then, they remembered Velcro. Velcro! They attached Velcro patches to
both the plastic bar and the end of the sleeping bag, and they worked
perfectly. By the end of November, the team had a working prototype
and were testing it. A month later, they were already polishing their
presentation.
At the conference in January, it was clear the judges' were intrigued
with the team's presentation and idea, say members. The panel suggested
all kinds of applications for the roller, particularly military uses.
When the team heard they'd received second place, it was a sweet moment.
"We were screaming and hugging each other," says Orozco.
The team won a $2,500 prize and had their trip expenses paid. Orozco
thinks their success was due to perfecting their presentation almost
as much as their product. "It's good to have good ideas, but you need
to be able to communicate in order to sell your idea," says Lopez.
For more information on HES, go to www.berkeleyhes.org/.
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