Engineering Better Bikes
Posted on May 8th, 2020 by Mary Lord
From better mountain-bike suspension systems to frames designed for women, there’s a lot of engineering that goes into today’s high-performance bicycles. Meet some of the engineers whose research is improving your ride!
Filed under: Special Features | Comments Off on Engineering Better Bikes
Tags: bicycle design, Eric L. Wang, forces and motion, helmet, Liv cycling Sophia Shih, Mechanical engineering, Sports Engineering, University of Nevada Reno
Curling, that icy version of shuffleboard, is the Henny Youngman of Olympic sports: It gets no respect. But technology has touched even this unique pursuit, in the form of an engineered “SmartBroom” that is changing how athletes train and play. 
From 360-degree cameras to “green” stadiums, the Super Bowl offers plenty of engineering to cheer about. This eGFI roster of hands-on design activities, videos, and other resources will help your students learn forces, motion, and other gridiron-related STEM concepts. 
Ballparks have come a long way from the baseball diamond cut into an Iowa cornfield in the 1989 movie Field of Dreams. Engineers have found new ways to design ever-more spacious stadiums, with better views, smart systems that reduce energy costs, and even apps that let you order food from craft beer to peanuts delivered to your seat.
What does engineering have to do with Thanksgiving? Plenty, including football broadcasting technology and meatless Tofurkey, among other holiday delights.
In this activity, students in grades 5 to 12 learn about accuracy, precision, and simple machines by working in teams to design and build a robotic basketball “player” that can nail a free-throw shot three times in a row.
In this lesson, students in grades 3 to 12 explore how engineers incorporate the latest materials and manufacturing techniques to improve the performance of sports equipment by constructing a functional racquet out of everyday materials that can volley against another team’s racquet at least six times.
What does basketball have in common with engineering? Plenty, if you’re Rhodes Scholar Reed Doucette, a former University of Southern California stand-out player and student now pursuing a doctorate in mechanical engineering at Oxford.
