Physics Teacher Demonstrates His Own Engineering Project For Students
Alumnus Brent Matus (Class of 2020), Central Catholic AP Physics teacher, recently shared his college engineering capstone project with his students as a classroom lesson. Brent is graduating from the University of Toledo this coming weekend with a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering.
For his Senior Design class project, Brent designed a Rubik’s Cube puzzle solver. Previous engineering students had created a mechanical structure to move the cube. However, they did not come up with a way to program a computer to make the structure solve the puzzle. Brent and his team built a programmable logic controller to send signals to the structure, and they used Python code to make it follow commands to move and solve the puzzle.
Brent brought the project to show his CCHS classes to help improve their critical thinking skills. It also gave them an example of what it’s like to be a mechanical engineer who creates designs that will solve problems. His students were able to try it out and learn how the programming aspect worked. They scrambled the Rubik’s Cube in random ways, and Brent’s system was able to quickly solve it every time. The students learned that any 3 x 3 puzzle can be solved in 20 moves or less, regardless of how many moves it takes to scramble it.
“Working as a teacher while I’m finishing up my own studies has advantages and disadvantages,” said Brent, who currently serves as a varsity girls’ basketball assistant coach at his alma mater. “It has been difficult at times to balance both my classwork and my teaching, so I am looking forward to graduation and not having to do that anymore. But being a student has also given me such fresh experiences. I have been in classes as a student where I’ve learned new ways to present the material to my own students, and that has been very beneficial.”
Brent and his classmates were among 70 teams of engineering students who showcased their projects at the University of Toledo Engineering Expo on December 6.
