Reporter’s Notebook: Emergency measures
“Can somebody let her out of there?” asked an audience member plaintively.“Her” was Taylor Williamson, a student in the Product Engineering Processes class (2.009), and she was trembling inside a 4-1/2-foot-tall glass cylinder full of water as part of a demonstration of her team’s product. She’d been submerged for several minutes while her teammates described the device — a system to provide an air supply to surfers who get knocked underwater by a big wave — and while they began to answer questions from the audience.She looked quite relieved when her teammates, prodded by the questioner, offered her a ladder to climb out of the tank. “The water was ridiculously cold. They filled it from a garden hose that had been outside,” said Williamson, a senior in mechanical engineering. “My teammates brought a few buckets of warm water from the bathrooms to warm it up a bit. Then I was...