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This department contains multiple stories. Please make a selection:
› NMSU Launches Fourth Microfilm Project in Mexico
› HRTM Department Upgraded to a School
› Faculty Named to Endowed Positions, Regents Professorships
› NMSU Opens Office in Chihuahua
› New Orientation Program Debuts
› Horseshoe Tales - Reviving a Lost Art

Horseshoe Tales - Reviving a Lost Art By Ellen Davis
1:30 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 23
Ready! Set! Calculate! Engineering students and faculty members gather on the Horseshoe for the first slide rule competition of the calculator age.
Usually teachers are the ones testing students, but the tables were turned in February when a group of NMSU students got a chance to test their teachers.

The occasion was National Engineers Week and the student chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers decided to bring back the slide rule competition - an event that had been a hit during previous Engineers Week celebrations in the 1960s and '70s.

"I'd never seen a slide rule used, so I thought it would be fun," says club president Sarah Suttmiller.

Sutmiller says a club member's father suggested the type of questions that could be answered with a slide rule, so the students developed some questions and checked their answers on a computer.

Students and faculty members brought in a wide assortment of slide rules for the competition, ranging in size from six inches to four feet. Kris Peterson, a professor of electrical engineering, brought in the slide rule he had used in high school and college. Martha Mitchell, head of the Department of Chemical Engineering, used her father's slide rule, which he had given her two years ago.

"I thought I would try to prove that even kids of the calculator age could take part in a competition like this," Mitchell says.

Ten faculty members participated in the first round of the competition, in which they were judged on how accurately they could answer a set of 10 problems.

"You could tell they hadn't done this in a while," Suttmiller says. (Participants were allowed to use the manuals for their slide rules.)

Four faculty members were selected to advance to a second round in which they were judged on how fast they could answer a set of 10 problems. The ultimate winner was Ian Leslie, an associate professor of mechanical engineering. Peterson took second place and Mitchell, who had never used a slide rule until three days before the competition, finished third.

"My father was impressed," she says.

Participants are already looking forward to next year's competition.

"I'm going to buy a better slide rule off eBay," Leslie says.
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