Academic circuit challenge - do they have these?

[DrG]

I am regularly impressed by the answers to someone posting a question…how do I do this? I look at the answers as well as those answers resulting from a quick search and find several very different schematics….and yes, on occasion I even have my own “solution”.

I was also thinking about this cooking show on TV called Chopped. They give three chefs the same basket of food items (with a flair for bizarre items) and they have to make a meal for some judges.

Do they have an analogous competition or testing procedure in the Electronics and Computer world? No, I don’t think one would make a particularly popular TV show, although I would probably watch episodes if done right.

So-called computer and electronics contests that I have seen almost always feature a particular component or don't have a collection of components at all,  and I don’t mean something like that.

So, the students have to build some function using all or some of the parts available for the solution. A basic passing grade is awarded if the circuit worked, but higher grades are awarded for various other characteristics of the solution like, price, precision, endurance, power consumption and so on. Of course, you would have to be pretty clever and intentional with the parts available.

You can even include some controllers with programming capabilities in the “parts collection”.

I am not necessarily talking about something along the lines of Apollo 13 CO2 scrubber, but that is the general idea. The key would be that the choice of parts would allow several different ways of solving the challenge and each of the solutions would have advantages and disadvantages with particular weightings such that there would be a “best” solution.

I do see some value in a timed test (maybe even as long as 8 hours) along these lines that would tap into a skill set that I would *think* (and I stress it is only my thinking). The idea would be for the test to have both criterion and predictive validity, as I learned those terms.

Do they already have such practical challenges in the academic EE world?