Sweet Briar College
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P.O. Box 1056
Sweet Briar, VA 24595
{P} 434.381.6262
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What can you make with 50 feet of duct tape, 20 pounds of corrugated board and a working knowledge of Archimedes Principle on buoyancy? If you’re a Sweet Briar College student enrolled in Engineering 110 you can make a boat.
This fall, seven students taking Designing Our World: An Introduction to Engineering Design are building boats that in a few days will be raced on Sweet Briar’s Lower Lake at the sixth annual Cardboard Boat Regatta.
In the first days of class, students were split up into teams of two or three and tasked with coming up with a clever name for their boat, writing a proposal, and building a scale model, a full-size test model and lastly — when all the kinks are worked out — a final boat.
Historically, the boats aren’t big; they aren’t fancy. They’re apt to look more like refrigerator boxes with wings than conventional watercraft. But they should float, which admittedly is the most important thing when it comes to boat making.
The question is, can the cardboard boats and their crews float long enough to negotiate a roughly 300-yard-long, figure-eight course without making contact with the lake bottom?
That has yet to be seen, but if the effort that has gone into designing, building and testing the boats is any indication, the 2009 Cardboard Boat Regatta — to be held at 12:15 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 24 at the Boathouse — could be a nail-biter.
On race day, Daisy’s Pearl, will be raced by Caitlin Jones ’13 and Lindsay Davis ’13; Wreckless Abandon will be piloted by P.J. Peek ’12 and Casey Dyckman ’13; and the team of Paula Southworth ’13, Rachel Wilkerson ’13 and Mary Massie ’10 will launch Emerald Epiphany.
Prizes will be given for speed, buoyancy, design and for the team with the most overall points. Up for grabs are the team’s name on a perpetual plaque, certificates and lots of “Bistro Bucks,” to be used at the on-campus restaurant Le Bistro.
Awards have been provided by the Boxwood Circle and corrugated board for the boats was donated by International Paper. Admission is free and the public is invited. In the event of rain, the race will be rescheduled.
For more information, contact assistant professor of engineering Dorsa Sanadgol at dsanadgol@sbc.edu or (434) 381-6104.
