OT - MGoConcreteCanoe and MGoSteelBridge Competition Weekend
Today both the Concrete Canoe Team and Steel Bridge Team head to Kalamazoo (WMU) for competition weekend. If you live near the that area, I would recommend coming out on Sunday to watch the canoe races at Ramona Park in Portage (9:00-4:00). I'm not sure what Steel Bridge's aspirations are, but canoe is shooting for 4th place overall (out of 10, finished 8th last year) and finishing better than Ski Mask U.
If you can't make it out this year, then next year should be a bit easier seeing as we're the host school.
Anyways, Go Blue and go engineering student teams w0000
March 26th, 2010 at 10:21 AM ^
the other 9 schools that are doing the concrete canoe competition???
March 26th, 2010 at 10:27 AM ^
Western Michigan
MSU
Michigan Tech
Lawrence Tech
Ohio Northern
Toledo
Detroit
Wayne State
Calvin College (Bridge only?)
Case Western (Bridge only?)
Ohio Northern won last year's regional, Mich Tech and MSU are perennial contenders.
March 26th, 2010 at 10:33 AM ^
the only reason why i wanted to know is because my college back in windsor, St. Clair College used to compete in the concrete canoe comp...
March 26th, 2010 at 10:34 AM ^
oh nice, then they probably still do, they're just in a different region/conference. Ours is called the North Central Conference. The winner goes to National Competition out in California and there's 20 teams at that one.
March 26th, 2010 at 11:03 AM ^
As a Calvin student studying abroad, I'd be interested to hear how this goes. Please let me know. It's not often that Calvin is mentioned in the same sentence as UofM, but I think our engineers can hold their own. Go Blue and Go Knights.
March 26th, 2010 at 11:54 AM ^
I'm a Calvin engineering student, and I was unaware that there was a bridge team. I'm not a mechanical or civil engineer though, so maybe I just haven't heard of it, but it's not like there's that many of us.
That said, I think you're right that they can hold their own.
March 26th, 2010 at 10:28 AM ^
I was a member of the concrete canoe team when I attended UM. It was hosted at Lawrence Tech and we raced at Kennsington. We used glass filled binders to decrease the weight of our canoe and called it the "Hair Ball II" in honor of Ren and Stimpy. True story.
March 27th, 2010 at 12:34 AM ^
Haha man we just called our canoe Wolverine this year in honor of the movie.
...Wolverine?
March 26th, 2010 at 12:04 PM ^
Man, that sounds awesome! I'm psyched it will be held here next year.
March 26th, 2010 at 12:23 PM ^
...covers the history of concrete ships.
Nice treatment of WWI and WWII ships including the SS McKloskey class.
Enjoy the history lesson.
Enjoy the history lesson.
... with Michigan having a Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering program, and being the only one of those schools competing that does ... you'd think we'd have a competitive advantage. Can't they test in the tank down is West Engineering or something?
March 27th, 2010 at 12:30 AM ^
Yea we did test in west hall this year. Just for canoeing practice in general with aluminum canoes, and spoke with professors about rowing technique. Didn't wanna take the actual concrete canoe because by the end of race day it gets pretty beat up.
I did CEE at UofM. Yall go kick some butt.
...a Human Powered Submarine Team that competes in the International Submarine Races held annually at Naval Surface Warface Center in Carderock, MD.
Here's a picture of their 2009 entry.
Since NSWC Carderock is one of my customers, I'm planning to attend the next ISR in Jun/July 2011 and cheer the U-M HPST on.
Since NSWC Carderock is one of my customers, I'm planning to attend the next ISR in Jun/July 2011 and cheer the U-M HPST on.
Thanks for the support shown in the thread
Steel Bridge team took home the regional title and are going to Nationals. They constructed their bridge in about 12ish minutes and passed the weight loading test. Their event is a sight to behold, it was quite exciting.
As for Canoe, we finished 6th place overall out of 8, managing to defeat Sparty (w000000) and Toledo (whose canoe broke in pieces before the weekend. They patched it up and were given a hearty applause for their efforts when they showed up to the park on race day. They only lasted for 4 races then had to withdraw. Big ups to them.)
Next year both steel bridge and concrete canoe is at U-M. Details won't be known until football season.