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Concrete canoe racers get a splash of real-life
learning
By Diane Ainsworth
Take a little Portland cement (Type II only), add some low density
aggregates to obtain the correct water-cement ratio, mix, and
apply to the fiberglass hull of a canoe, let cure for several
weeks and voila! A concrete canoe fit for competition.
Berkeley’s recipe for the 130-pound canoe, affectionately
called "Calcatraz," set sail last June on Lake Mendota,
next to the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, in the 14th
annual national Concrete Canoe Competition.
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| Concrete
canoe team members (from left) Hank Fung, Lacey Walker, Chris
Conkle, and John-Michael Wong work on a fiberglass mold of
the hull. Concrete canoe races date back to the late 1960s.
Both the University of Illinois-Urbana and UC Berkeley claim
they held the first ASCE regional competitions in the early
1970s. In 1988 the concrete canoe race became a national competition,
sponsored by ASCE and Master Builders, Inc. Photo: Bart
Nagel |
The campus’s entry – named after
Alcatraz Island, with the "C" added to meet tournament
rules that "Cal" be somewhere in the name – was
designed by 14 undergraduate civil and mechanical engineering
students. They competed against 500 engineering students from
25 colleges nationwide in a test of brains, not brawn.
The race is something of an oxymoron – how can a concrete
canoe float, let alone race? But therein lies the challenge. The
competition is designed to encourage innovative thinking and to
give promising young students a venue to show off their engineering
prowess. As most Berkeley contestants, past and present, would
agree, there’s more to be learned when the paddles hit the
water than from sitting in the classroom.
"I’ve learned more about canoes than I’ve ever
learned from any class," says Calcatraz project manager Margarita
Constantinides, who received her bachelor of science degree in
engineering last spring. "You learn not only the technical
details of canoe construction, but to really pay attention to
the small details. You realize that theory doesn’t always
turn out to be right."
A 21-foot-long, four-person canoe, Calcatraz arrived on the UW
Madison campus in June, on the 150th anniversary of the American
Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and one day before the start
of the four-day national student conference. The National Student
Steel Bridge Competition and the National Daniel W. Mead Contest
on engineering ethics were held simultaneously at the same location,
drawing more than 1,500 engineering students, faculty, alumni,
and friends from campuses nationwide.
Calcatraz was hatched in the Concrete Lab in Davis Hall in August
2001, when the Berkeley engineering students first met. They needed
something lighter and faster than "Magical," Berkeley’s
2000 canoe entry, says Constantinides, so they focused on design,
construction, and selection of materials.
"We chose a special man-made aggregate that was low density
and kind of like glass bubbles to use in our cement," Constantinides
says. "The people responsible for the mixture came up with
about 25 or 30 concrete mixes. Then they had to test the strength
of each mixture, essentially by breaking the concrete apart."
Other students concentrated on the hull design, reinforcements
that would allow the boat to withstand maximum stress.
"It was tough and we had conflicting goals," Constantinides
says. The sprint races required canoes that were long and slender
for maximum speed; the slaloms required shorter canoes that could
make tight turns around the buoys. "This year, our canoe
is shorter in length, has a narrow beam for high, straight-line
speed, a flat-bottom cross-section for improved initial stability,
and a flared back section to allow the back paddler to sit further
back and increase turning speed," Constantinides says.
Berkeley students raise the majority of funding for their $20,000
canoes during the course of the school year. A modest amount of
funding is provided by the College of Engineering, but most of
the money – about $12,000 – comes as contributions
from engineering and construction firms.
The campus has four national titles under its belt. Last year,
the team won first place in the regional competition but placed
ninth in the nationals. This year, the team won the Mid-Pacific
regional semi-finals, and took first place in the technical paper
competition.
Author Diane Ainsworth is on staff at the UC
Berkeley Public Affairs Office.
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