More than 160 middle school students will participate in the ninth annual Fluid Power Challenge sponsored by the National Fluid Power Association (NFPA) at MSOE on Monday, Nov. 7.

These budding engineers will learn about fluid power (hydraulics and pneumatics) by building a pneumatic lifter that can pick an object up and place it in another location. In addition to the number of pick-and-place cycles a school’s machine completes, a review of each team’s design approach, teamwork and portfolio will be used in the final evaluation.

Their teachers will have the opportunity to tour MSOE’s Fluid Power InstituteTM and learn about educational opportunities at the university. Fluid power is present in a variety of industries including aerospace, agriculture, automation, construction machinery, energy, entertainment, food processing, packaging, medical devices, mining and more.

Thousands of fluid power career opportunities exist. An estimated 269,700 mechanical engineering jobs and 71,900 sales engineering positions are expected to be available in 2022 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Fluid Power Challenge is one of several STEM-related programs MSOE offers for middle school students. For more information contact the STEM Department at (414) 277-7238 or precollege@msoe.edu.