Engineering away one of life’s little annoyances

Mechanical engineering students at McMaster University have won a $7,500 prize for designing a hands-free towel dispensing machine for public washrooms.
Hopefully they have solved that perennial problem of paper becoming stuck in the dispensing machine. You wash your hands and are left with dripping hands and nowhere to wipe them but on your pants or shirt.
The students designed a dispensing machine that presents the customer with a folded tower. The double thickness of the towel is supposed to resist tearing.
The competition was organized by Scott Paper of Mississauga, Ontario and Mukesh Jain, an associate professor in McMaster’s Department of Mechanical Engineering.
Paul Cutrona, Graham Dickinson, Stuart Evans, Brett Jermyn and Michael Whitby, who are all enrolled in the third-year mechanical engineering design course at McMaster, won the prize.