1. The Mission + Launch System

• Corner A — Sketch It. You plan on paper before you cut a single piece.
• Corner B — Build It. You grab materials and figure it out as you go.
• Corner C — Steal It. You look up how someone else solved it, then improve.
• Corner D — Test It. You start with the smallest version that works, then scale up.

• Corner A — The smartest engineer in the room solves the problem.
• Corner B — The best team beats the smartest individual every time.
• Corner C — Failure is data. You haven't engineered until something has broken.
• Corner D — The simplest solution that works is almost always the right one.

• Corner A — A drone. High-tech, autonomous, fast.
• Corner B — A catapult. Mechanical, simple, no electricity required.
• Corner C — A pneumatic tube system. Continuous, reliable, hospital-grade.
• Corner D — A zipline. Gravity-powered, low-tech, repeatable.

Defend your choice. Then keep that question in your head — you're about to find out what your firm is actually building.

Location: Nationwide Children's Hospital — West Connector Bridge

Status: A structural assessment has identified critical integrity issues in the connector bridge linking the Main Building to the North Tower. The bridge is closed indefinitely. Estimated reopening: 6–8 weeks.

Patients affected: 64 pediatric inpatients in the North Tower.

Services impacted: Daily medication delivery · sterile supply transport · lab sample transport · equipment exchange. Couriers can do it on foot, but a 40-minute round-trip means lab samples spoil and medications are late.

Hospitals genuinely use mechanical delivery — pneumatic tube systems move tens of thousands of lab samples, prescriptions, and small supplies daily at major children's hospitals around the country. When those systems fail, hospitals have to engineer workarounds fast. The problem you're solving this week is the same kind of problem biomedical and facilities engineers solve in real hospitals every year.

Camp staff will group you. Find your table. Sit down together. Introduce yourselves — name, school, and one thing you've built before (anything counts — a treehouse, a TikTok, a model rocket, a meal).

Every member has a specific job. Roles rotate or overlap during the week, but every firm needs all four covered.

3-person firm? Combine Data Analyst + Presentation Lead.

Right now, fill in the front page only:

• A working firm name (you can change it later)
• All firm members and their assigned roles
• Your firm's one-sentence philosophy (what kind of engineering do you do?)

Count your materials. If you're short, raise your hand before you start building.

1. T-base: Lay 2 dowels in a T-shape. Lash them tight with rubber bands at the joint.
2. Square base: Add 2 more dowels to close the T into a square. Lash all 4 corners. This is your foundation — wobble here means wobble everywhere.
3. Vertical posts: Stand 4 dowels up, one at each corner of the square. Lash each one tight to the base.
4. Front bar: Lash a horizontal dowel across the top of the two FRONT posts. This is where your arm will pivot.
5. Back support bar: Lash a horizontal dowel across the two BACK posts — but a few inches LOWER than the front bar. This is your release stop and your tension anchor.

1. The arm: Lash 2 dowels together end-to-end, with 4–5 inches of overlap. This gives you a long, strong throwing arm.
2. Pivot: Lay the arm across the front bar. Lash it loosely so it pivots freely — too tight and it won't swing.
3. Tension band: Loop a rubber band (or several) from the back support bar to the launching end of the arm. This is your energy source. More wraps = more stored energy = more launch.
4. Launcher cup: Use a dab of low-temp hot glue to mount your cup or bottle cap to the launching end of the arm. This holds your payload.

Goggles on. Clear the area in front of the catapult. No people, no pets, no firms downrange.

Load a foam payload into the cup. Pull the arm down. Release.

Run 5 test launches. Don't change anything between them — just see how consistent your build is.

• Approximate distance (steps, feet, or tile count)
• Direction (straight, left drift, right drift)
• Anything that moved, bent, slipped, or broke on the catapult

Don't optimize yet. The goal of v1 is to find out what's loose, what's weak, and what you'll fix tomorrow. A wobbly first build is normal. A first build that fires the same direction every time is rare — and if yours does, you got lucky on tight lashings.

Before you leave, your firm answers these in your 📋 Engineering Firm Logbook:

1. What variable seemed to affect distance the most? (tension? arm length? release angle?)
2. Where is your catapult weakest? Where will it fail first?
3. What's the #1 thing you're going to change tomorrow?

Presentation Lead — take 3 photos before you leave: front view of the catapult, close-up of the arm and tension band, and a launch in progress if you can.

Mechanical engineers design every machine in a hospital that moves: surgical robot arms, patient lifts, MRI tables, pharmacy dispensing systems, blood-draw chairs. Every one of them stores and releases energy in a controlled way. Your rubber band catapult is the same physics as a hospital pneumatic door closer or a hydraulic patient lift — different energy source, same principles.

Target dimensions: a 24" × 24" landing zone (marked on the floor of your classroom — your "receiving deck")

Distance from launch line: the staff will mark this in the room

Required performance: at least 3 successful landings out of 5 launches by end of Day 2

1. It moves forward — at whatever horizontal speed you launched it.

2. It rises, then falls — gravity pulls it down the entire time. It goes up because you launched it upward; it stops going up when gravity has slowed it to zero; then it falls.

3. It traces an arc. The highest point of that arc is called the apex. The horizontal distance from launch to landing is called the range.

Before you tune anything, fix what's loose. Re-lash any joints that wiggle. Add wraps anywhere the frame racks during a launch. A precision launcher needs a rigid frame — otherwise your "tuning" is just adding noise to a wobbly system.

Run 3 baseline launches with no other changes. Record distance and direction. This is your starting line.

As a firm, decide on one variable to change. Just one. Examples:

• Add 2 more rubber band wraps on the tension band (more force)
• Change the angle of the front bar (changes the launch angle)
• Pull the arm down to a marked, repeatable position every time (release consistency)
• Swap to a different payload — same size, different weight
• Add a backstop or guide so the arm hits the same spot every release

Predict first. Before you test, your Data Analyst writes down what you think will happen and why. Wrong predictions are valuable — they tell you something you didn't know.

Run 5 launches with your single change. Aim at the receiving zone every time.

• Distance from launch line
• Hit the receiving zone? (Y/N)
• If not, how far off and in which direction?

After your 5 launches, your firm meets for 60 seconds. Did the change help? Hurt? Do you keep it, undo it, or push it further? Then pick your next variable and run another 5.

Stretch goal: 5 out of 5. If you hit that, try a heavier payload — real hospital supplies aren't all the same weight.