Concrete that floats doesn’t seem possible, right?
Wrong.
A team of MSU students conquered that feat and will travel to Madison, Wis., to show off its concrete boat at the MBT/ASCE National Concrete Canoe Competition.
The group defeated teams from Michigan, Ohio and Canada at the North Central Region competition, held at Lansing’s Grand River Park on April 13 and 14.
The national competition will be held in June. It is put on by Master Builders Inc. and the American Society of Civil Engineers.
“We hope to win this year,” said Sarah Rozema, a civil engineering senior. “But we are also looking to have fun. That’s why we all do it.”
The team of about 25 engineering students spent about 1,142 hours building a concrete canoe that utilizes glass beads to float.
The group did not make it to the national competition last year, but it took fourth place in 2000 and 10th place in 1999. MSU engineering students have been building concrete structures that float since 1971.
“To win this year, we have to be a lot more aggressive out there,” Rozema said.
She said the students started designing the canoe during fall semester. They started with the shape and the hull design and moved on to creating the concrete mixture.
They started designing the mold and pouring the mixture this semester.
“We would spend countless hours working on it,” Rozema said. “Sometimes, it would be one day a week and then there were times when we would work on it for 10 days straight.”
Civil engineering junior Kirk Wolf said the group looks for new members at the beginning of each year who are willing to work hard.
“There is a lot of team effort that went into it,” he said.
And Wolf said with the right knowledge, anything can be designed so that it can float.
“Water has a specific gravity of 1,” he said. “If anything floats, it has a specific gravity of less than 1 but around 1. Wood has a specific gravity of around 1.”
He said the glass beads don’t soak up water and therefore create the specific gravity of the canoe around 1 when combined with the concrete mixture.
Teams are judged on the boat’s construction and the data of their mixture. They also are judged on a paddling race.
“Thirty percent of the points come from the race,” Wolf said. “We have two long-distance races and three sprints.”
The other 70 percent of judging is based on the group’s description of the project.
“We are also judged on presentation, display and the final product - how the boat looks to the eye,” Wolf said.
The team is set to start competition June 21 in the three-day national contest.
“Our goal is to bring as many people from the team as possible to show good representation of MSU,” Rozema said.
