The Brainstorm

 From Arcane:

I say you should try

First of all, thank you for stopping by to help out. We really appreciate it!

Our goal is to have several people with a verity of backgrounds explore this problem and help us find new and innovative solutions. Just because you're not an engineer doesn't mean you don't have good ideas! Besides, engineers miss all sorts of things because they are engineers and we know this. 

That is why you have been called on to help!

( Problem Parameters )

( Posting Guidelines )

Here's the current task (this will certainly change over time, we will tell you when it does):
Your task is to come up with ideas for ways of doing one (or multiple) of the following:
-sorting stuff
-telling plastic apart from aluminum
-telling plastic apart from tin/steel
-telling plastic apart from glass
-telling glass apart from aluminum
-telling glass apart from tin/steel
-telling tin/steel apart from aluminum
-a means of feeding bottles of various sizes reliably into a machine

Since this is for an actual ASME competition, here's a link to the original rules and here's a link to the FAQ for those rules. Your ideas do not have to be in the rules, but if you want some inspiration, its a good place to look. 

This is your FAQ post. If you aren't sure what is being asked of you, ask here. 

As for posting your ideas, we made this a free-posting community. You don't have to join on to put your thoughts up. aws_team is both the mod account here and also the team's account. We are all engineers and nerdy and straight forward sort of people, but we are also full of technobabble. We understand if you need a translation and are not offended if you ask.