Winning MCC Engineering Students

MCC engineering students Jeremy Dixon of McHenry, Thomas Aquino of Island Lake and Tyler Patterson of Marengo, display their award-winning catapult structure that captured second place overall and best precision at the at the fifth annual Suburban Chicago Intercollegiate Catapult Contest at Harper College. Not pictured is Wayne Reynolds of Lake in the Hills.

 

A team of four McHenry County College students finished second overall out of 26 teams, and won the precision event at the fifth annual Suburban Chicago Intercollegiate Catapult Contest at Harper College.

The MCC team included Jeremy Dixon of McHenry, Thomas Aquino of Island Lake, Tyler Paterson of Marengo and Wayne Reynolds of Lake in the Hills. They were among three teams from McHenry County College that participated in the event.

Engineering students from area community colleges designed and built their own catapults, which were entered into the contest. Competitions were held in the categories of distance, accuracy, and precision. 

The students really worked well together and utilized each of their individual strengths to develop and fabricate a design that was cost-effective, accurate, and performed well,” said MCC’s applied technology instructor Bob Mihelich, AIA, NCARB. “They also had a lot of fun doing so.”

The intercollegiate catapult competition was a great experience,” said Arianna Bello of Crystal Lake. “It was interesting to see all the different designs that teams came up with given the same set of parameters.

The competition atmosphere was friendly and accepting. It was enjoyable to see students from different colleges and different areas of study come together for the same purpose.”

For more information on MCC’s chemistry, physics or pre-engineering classes, visit contact Steven Socol, Ph.D. at (815) 455-8714 ssocol@mchenry.edu.