Despite the massive raindrops pelting the windows of Building 4, the mood in lecture hall 370 was decidedly sunny. Nothing could rain on the parade of ingenuity at Engineering Design Workshop (EDW) Final Presentations, the culmination of a month-long program that welcomes rising ninth through twelfth grade students to the Edgerton Center Student Project Lab to build the engineering projects of their dreams. The annual workshop, whose unofficial motto is “Engage, Dream, Wonder,” gives students the space to apply and expand their knowledge and skills by engaging in passion-driven experiential learning.
One student gave voice to the magic of this process, stating “In EDW, everyone is pursuing their own interests, and I think that's very important for creativity.”
This year’s cohort of 28 students came from as close as Brookline, MA, and as far as Bologna, Italy. Their inventions range from practical to fantastical and, remarkably, every single team produced a working prototype of their ambitious designs.
Driven, ironically enough, by their self-proclaimed laziness, The Lazy Team presented an automated laundry folder connected to a webcam which determines the type of clothing item and initiates the correct folding sequence. This required some serious new coding skills to control servo motors through the new-to-them Arduino, as well as figuring out how to fold different garments using a limited series of motions and no human hands.
The Chairman overcame issues related to balance, wayfinding, and camera placement to create self-homing office chairs that restore meeting spaces back to neutral without human intervention. Bright Wheels created a stylish safety feature for bicycles: light displays that illuminate the wheels with custom words and images. The opening statement of their presentation elicited applause and murmurs of approval from the crowd: “We think that science isn't just something you study at school and is boring. It's something you feel. You try, you fail.”
Letting their imaginations (and calculations) soar, the Balloonatics fabricated a motorized scale model of the house from Disney’s Up. The team enthusiastically stated, “We are proud that we had more failures than any other team here!” before launching their creation to sail smoothly across the lecture hall. Also inspired by pop culture, Stark Industries prototyped voice-activated smart glasses which respond to the wearer’s queries through a visual display. The Knights of the Game Table picked up coding and woodworking skills, creating a custom game table with an interactive touch screen. In the most artistic presentation of the day, the team called MFG shared their clever mystical floating galaxy (MFG), complete with vantablack paint, planets floating in orbit, and a hologram Earth.
These next generation problem-solvers approached a broad set of challenges with empathy, ingenuity, and teamwork. After the final project presentation, students reflected on their time at EDW, with one sharing “I really felt supported here… Every single one of my ideas, even the silly ones, were not only listened to, but supported, and other people added onto them. And it's just something I really appreciate.”
Another student spoke to the collaborative and collegial nature of the program, reflecting that “One of the cool things about the project is that I felt like we were, all 40 of us, working on the same team… Everyone was ready to learn, everyone was ready to help, and everyone was ready to accept the other ones. And I think in some ways, we are way more united than not. And I think that's the most beautiful part, like, really the human part is what I like the most about this project.”
Visit the Edgerton Center Instagram or Facebook pages to hear personal reflections from EDW participants and mentors. For documentation of the entire EDW process and all of the teams’ incredible final presentations, visit the blog created by MIT Alum and EDW Mentor, Jonathan Dietz '73: edw2025.blogspot.com.
