That’s what my son did last week.

Eric spent a week at the Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland in a program for high school juniors and seniors. Putting aside the fun associated with living in a frat house, the academics of the program were fascinating.

In addition to learning about each of the engineering disciplines, each team was assigned a real-world problem to consider. The team needed to devise a solution, create a budget for production, and identify not only its strengths but limitations. The program culminated with each team presenting a power-point and explaining their device.

Eric’s team was assigned to clean up chemical and oil spills, like the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Together, they designed an ROV (a Remotely Operated Vehicle – I didn’t know what that was without explanation) that would navigate polluted water, and filter it through a process called reverse osmosis (I still don’t know what that is). The oil collected would fill tanks in the bottom of the device and once a tank was filled, it would be ejected from the bottom of the ROV and a floatation device would bring it up to the surface to be picked up by a trailing boat. The oil would then be refined and re-used.

Pretty interesting stuff. I guess he really did discover engineering.