Want to know what's going on at ICC Engineering?
Today, at Blandin Beach, Itasca Community College Engineering students raced the aluminum foil canoes they designed and built. Each of the 18 teams had one roll of duct tape, 100 square feet of aluminum foil, and 72 pieces of lath. They were allowed to use glue guns to connect the pieces of wood. Student groups joined either the stock class, where they used paddles to propel their craft, or the modified class where they could use any type of motor. Many engineering principles were learned by the students as they completed this project. Specifically, they learned the fluid engineering principles of buoyancy, stability, and hydrodynamics -- their boats had to float, not tip, and move efficiently through the water. The canoe race consisted of starting at one buoy, traversing 100 yards to another buoy which they circled and then raced back to the beginning. The top two scores were boats from the stock class which raced the course in 46 seconds each.
2 comments:
what a fun project! make an event of it next time, i would love to come watch!
Awesome! only question is, how many boats ended up on the bottom? (we do tend to learn more from failures than successes).
..and another argument for my theory that you should present the "golden sieve" award at the end of the year for the project that leaks the most water (although back in the mid '90s, our projects were trying to keep water in, not out!).
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