When parents told them not to play with their food, engineers apparently weren't listening.
Engineering Week, sponsored by the Student Association Engineering Council, continued Friday as nine teams of engineers competed in the "Consumable Tower" event to build the highest tower made entirely from edible materials.
Then, the competitors challenged to put their engineering skills where their mouths are - literally - by eating their creations.
"You take something very common, like food, and you take the structural aspect of it and put it to good use," said James Ambrose, SA Engineering Clubs Coordinator and organizer of Friday's competition. "Like other Engineering Week activities, you use creativity and engineering design skills."
Teams could only use the food products provided by organizers: carrots, celery, pretzel rods, graham crackers, peanut butter and Fluff, a marshmallow spread.
"They're all structural foods," said Ambrose.
A three-person team from UB's chapter of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics took first place with a 49-inch structure, which had a base of carrots and a tower of celery.
The victorious AIAA team members, Dayle Hodge, a sophomore mechanical and aerospace engineering major, Nicholas Leone, a senior aerospace engineering major and Denis Murdov*, a junior aerospace engineering major, said they took a different approach to the design than other groups by not using excessive amounts of peanut butter and Fluff as adhesives for their tower.
"We figured out that it doesn't make it any stickier, it just adds weight," said Leone.
Teams had 30 minutes to construct their towers. Those who were able to consume their edible structure within 10 minutes after building was completed earned extra points. Competitors did not have to eat the carrots or the celery, since they were not washed beforehand.
"The hardest part of the competition is the time limit," Ambrose said. "If they had two or three hours, you'd see some insane designs."
Even teams who did not take top honors did not consider the afternoon a total loss.
"I don't care, I'm starving," said Lindsay Peterson, a junior electrical engineering major, as she devoured the crackers that were part of her tower.
Peterson, along with Malati Patil, a junior electrical engineering major, built a 19-inch tower patterned after a log cabin.
A 10-person group from UB's chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers took second place with a 47-inch tower.
Also among the competitors were Christopher Regent and Terik Gaines, winners of Tuesday's "Egg Drop" competition, which was also part of Engineering Week.
Gaines, a senior mechanical engineering major, and Regent, a freshman aerospace engineering major, competed with fellow National Society of Black Engineers members Natasha Timmons, a senior industrial engineering major, Steiner Woodruffe, a senior legal studies major and Melissa Sears, a senior psychology major.
The NSBE team earned fifth place with a 41-inch tower of carrots and celery.
"We started out trying to make a log cabin with carrots, but it kept falling over," Regent said. "That didn't work, so we went to a tipi design with celery. The base of NSBE's tower was made of several stems of celery that leaned in together."
The competition drew some curious spectators who stopped to watch the towers of produce being stretched towards the Student Union ceiling.
"It looks like a big mess," said Jen Taranto, a junior mechanical engineering major who came to watch her classmates compete.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
