Design Project 3 Essay

Design project 3 will be a demonstration of all the engineering skills gained from first semester and from the first two projects. The design process has been performed a couple times already in design team 10 and now must be executed in an even greater extent for the final project. As engineers in order to find a solution to a problem it is necessary that existing solutions are considered because not only does it give ideas for possible designs, it can also lead to possible improvements to existing products. With knowledge of what has already been constructed strengths and weaknesses can be evaluated which then may be implemented into an original idea. Before this process begins the problem must be defined and the need to create a project

Mono skiing is skiing in a seated position with a single large ski coming out of the bottom of the device. Instead of ski poles the users use sticks with skis at the bottom of them to guide themselves down the hill and make turns as necessary. In the Paralympics there is a similar design for cross country skiing except there are two skis at the bottom and the user has large ski poles to push themselves forward. This relates to the design project because some paraplegic people with some hip mobility are able to participate in this activity. Mono skiing has events in the X games as well as the Paralympic games, which gives paraplegic people the opportunity to take part in extreme sporting even without the use of their legs. In February of 2012, the first backflip on a sit ski was performed which broke barriers for paraplegic athletes (Jackson, 2013). The downfall of this activity is that it is a lot more dangerous than regular skiing especially while doing tricks. Since paraplegic people have limited control of their lower body, their balance and stability might prevent them from landing properly and could lead to injury. Using this as a reference a similar design could be made for a skateboard on land using wheels instead of a ski and using poles to accelerate the rider