On August 24, Mr. Patrick Greene tasked students in his Introduction to Engineering Design classes to innovate new designs for the regular old coffee cup. The cups have to incorporate many unique features and qualities that would make them desirable.

Greene first assigned his students to brainstorm small designs individually in their notebooks. Then, they were divided into groups of two or three. The groups then had to take the best designs and combine ideas, thus creating a coffee cup with the best features of each group member’s design.

“Taking the best ideas of individual designs and combining them all into one product is a very effective way to create an amazing project,” said Brandon Connors.

After coming up with the new coffee cup designs, the groups had to sketch them. On a simple piece of graph paper, students took the ideas and sketched them to make a 2-D visual of their design. The sketches included the overall drawing of the cup, along with labels giving a short description of that specific portion of the design.

By, August 26, the students had finished their designs, and were ready to present to the class. Each group presented their ideas with descriptive detail. Other students were excited to see the ideas their classmates had come up with.

Some of the design ideas included a coffee cup with a built-in filter (giving the cup the ability to make coffee right inside) or the option of changing the temperature of the liquid inside of the cup (allowing it to keep hot drinks hot and cold drinks cold.)

After finishing the project, Connors said “This project really taught us students many aspects of engineering and design, allowing us to get innovative by taking something good and making it better.”