Visitors to Engineering Hall at Marquette University are greeted by a wide range of educational and research laboratories, each offering safe and collaborative environments for engineers to explore solutions to real-world problems.
Just as these laboratories inspire Marquette students to let their creativity flourish, the Halloween season has a way of sparking imaginations in fun, spooky directions.
Explore, if you dare, a few of the technologies and experiences in Engineering Hall that inspire engineering innovation and, with the right framing, a good campfire fable.
The living sludge monster
The horror: Imagine a bubbling, living sludge kept alive by the engineers who feed it every day in its lair overlooking Milwaukee. If you dare meet it, you will smell its stench before you see it. Be careful with this nightmare, for it does not sleep.
The reality: The fourth floor of Marquette’s Engineering Hall is home to the Water Quality Center; an educational and research space focused on environmental engineering and water resources engineering. Among the Center’s many active research projects is a living “anaerobic digester” containing a mix of billions of specialize microbes that breakdown organic pollutants and convert them to a renewable energy source – methane gas. The anaerobic digester currently calling Marquette home is actually a living colony of microorganisms. Though it doesn’t sleep or breathe oxygen, it’s no monster. It’s helping to create a cleaner planet, renewable energy and educate future engineers.
The (turkey) bone breaking machines
The horror: Imagine soulless machines that seek to crush whatever they grasp. Engineers visiting their laboratory offer up turkey bones and watch as the machines slowly work to splinter and snap. These machines can also go in reverse with simulated synthetic flesh, stretching it to its limits until it tears. A steel-bending sister machine lives in the basement with an appetite for metal.
The reality: These are mechanical presses used by engineers to test the strength and properties of various materials. For the biomedical engineers visiting the biomechanics lab in Engineering Hall, turkey bones and synthetic skin samples simulate human tissue, aligning well to the engineers’ focus on technology that serves clinicians and patients. Similar mechanical presses in the building are used to test metal, wood and other materials for more experiments, learning and discovery.
Silent, reaching robotic arms
The horror: Imagine fast, metallic arms darting silently around you, obeying human orders with emotionless efficiency. Take caution with your demands, for they are precise and particular. Once you give these robotic arms a misplaced idea, you may be reaching for the red e-stop button to shut them down in an instant.
The reality: Marquette’s Omron Advanced Automation Lab is home to a variety of robotic arms provided by Omron Automation, a close industry partner of Marquette. Engineers use these robots to learn about robotics, manufacturing automation and supply chain management. Students are taught to safely operate the machines and make careful observations, but failure is expected and encouraged. Dr. Philip Voglewede, the lab’s director, affectionately calls the space a “failure lab,” understanding that success in automation comes from investigating when human-robot interactions fail.
Read more: Off and running: Omron Advanced Automation Lab lays groundwork for future collaboration
Shrieking steel
The horror: Imagine deep in the lower level of Engineering Hall, wires, hydraulics and creative minds collaborating to make once-silent-steel shriek and contort. An audience in hard hats watches with bated breath as earthquake-level forces slowly push a steel brace to failure. Clangs, clatters and metallic howls cry out as the engineers continue their work, satisfied to see their test subject bend to their will.
The reality: In Marquette’s Engineering Material and Structural Testing lab, engineers carefully create earthquake-level forces as part of a project to improve building design and repairs for earthquake resilience. A large-scale series of experiments are currently underway to apply up to 150,000 pounds of force on a steel brace, with hopes to create a novel approach to building repairable, sustainable steel buildings.
A tricky treadmill that wants you to fall
The horror: the biggest treadmill you’ve ever seen sits behind glass waiting for brave souls to take a turn. Just as you grow comfortable with your pace, this treadmill shifts hard in any direction, hoping to take a walker’s balance with it. The engineers serving this machine offer you no warning to its madness, they take delight in stumbles. For an added horror, these engineers may give you a VR headset to transport you to another reality for your troubling walk.
The reality: The Human Performance Lab in Engineering Hall is home to a specially designed treadmill that can shift in multiple directions and angles, intentionally challenging the balance of a walker (who wears a safety harness to prevent injury or a true fall). This technology is carefully controlled by biomedical engineers to perform experiments and therapies with individuals struggling with their balance and mobility, such as people with multiple sclerosis or recovering from strokes. In some cases, the engineers will use a VR headset to gamify the walker’s experience in a simulated walking environment – usually catching butterflies on a forest path.
These are just a few of the spaces and experiences that inspire Marquette engineers, and although they can spark some Halloween connections in October, they are year-round sources of hands-on learning, discovery and collaboration.
