By CARSON HUFFSTUTTER

ceh017@latech.edu

 

Swimming, splashing and sinking were the only assignments for freshman engineering students Oct. 11.

The Louisiana Tech Engineering and Science Association hosted the annual cardboard canoe race in the M.S. Carroll Natatorium and received a wave of a response.

“They come and they make their canoes and they race them,” Allison Cloud, vice president of LTEA and a junior chemistry major, said. She said the races are always fun to watch.

Cloud said viewers are always surprised at how long and how well the cardboard holds up.

“A well-constructed boat can make it three or four times across the pool,” Cloud said. 

She also said she took part in the races when she was a freshman.

“I was in the engineering program and our class participated in it,” she said. “Our group didn’t win, but it was a lot of fun.” 

In order to find freshmen who are interested in the event, LTEA visited university seminar engineering classes to talk about the races and handed sheets out with the rules, Jonathan Wheelis, a freshman chemical engineering major, said. The teams were divided and named by the seminar classes they are in, he said.

Many engineering students had never heard of this event, Joshua Taylor, a freshman mechanical engineer major, said.

“It is a part of our [class] grade,” Taylor said. “We receive a grade for attending and a grade for participating.”

Ten to 15 classes usually race canoes, he said. The day of the races the teams had about 35 minutes to put a design into action.

“We are using a design that has a flat bottom with sides and a point at the very end,” Taylor said.  

Before the races, students were discussing design, measurements and who would have the obligation of riding in the flimsy float. 

The rules allowed one roll of duct tape, two people from each team to race and every team to have an object that resembled a canoe, Leo Kukuy, a freshman biomedical engineering major, said.

Kukuy said he is glad there are events like this for engineering students.

“It’s a little more fun than punching buttons on a calculator,” he said. “You actually get to do something with your hands and test out your own theories.”   

Professors and students alike came to watch the event and cheer on their team.

In the end, Crittenden’s Engineering Problem Solving I class came away with the victory, bragging rights and a soggy piece of cardboard that once resembled a canoe.