Being a mechanical engineering student
They love to give us group design projects, we have had all sorts from trying to fix broken tibias together with plates and screws (harder than it sounds), to a proposal for a cross atlantic train tunnel (as silly as it sounds) to a portable wind turbine to be carried by mountaineers as an energy source (more plausible than it sounds).

We have just been set a new one however, and it's a royal pain in the ass. Each year we have a design module, and this year we have been tasked with designing a full microlight using a 3-D software program (called solidworks if anyone cares), and I really can't get it started. To be honest, out of all the projects I have done this one really is the hardest to get off the ground.
(xerophytic has no idea, Tue 8 Dec 2009, 14:54, 7 replies)

train tunnel
I hope you had it floating, tethered to the sea-bed, filled with vacuum and using supersonic mag-lev trains
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 8 Dec 2009, 15:01, closed)

Some groups wanted to use nuclear powered trains
(xerophytic has no idea, Tue 8 Dec 2009, 15:06, closed)

Microlight
off the ground - very good!!!
(nonstopdancer, Tue 8 Dec 2009, 15:58, closed)

no
no, it wasn't very good
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 8 Dec 2009, 16:11, closed)

off the ground
baddum tush! :D
(bottle_cap, Tue 8 Dec 2009, 18:17, closed)

In venture capital for four years
the zanniest (stupidest) idea that was placed before me was an ice-bridge from NI to Scotland. The guy wanted 25K to test his idea on the grand-canal outside Dublin.

I have more.
( The Scrunt Wants a Dozen Pints, Tue 8 Dec 2009, 19:32, closed)

Oh god
I remember doing those.

I had to design a thingy to be able to load / unload and carry a off-road motorbike on the back of a Defender 90. Why?!

And thank your lucky stars for Solidworks, we had to do it in AutoCAD light. Cheapskates.
( Dervel OTBC, Thu 10 Dec 2009, 10:05, closed)