Everything around you, including the device you’re using to read this magazine, required some form of packaging to make its way to you. That inescapable truth often echoes inside Cal Poly’s Packaging Dynamics Lab, where students and faculty put a spectrum of packaging designs to the ultimate test. Alive with a near constant buzz of electricity, a circuit of hulking machines simulates various conditions along a global distribution journey by land, air and sea. Students and faculty spend hours in the lab gathering data during capstone packaging design courses, senior project research and industry-sponsored validation testing for partners like Medtronic and Driscoll’s Farms. “The unique thing is how students get their hands on this testing equipment as undergrads,” says lab coordinator Ray Kisch. He joined students Nevada Schultz, Andy Boncich and Ross Barkow to show us around this microcosm of the world’s supply chain. Click the play button above to watch the machines in action.