Thursday, August 21, 2008

Screw you Concrete Canoe, we have DUCK TAPE (yes, "duck")

As an orientation/introduction to engineering, we took our freshmen (who responded to the letters that were sent out) in for a week of math, assessment, and ... building boats out of cardboard and duct tape. They had unlimited cardboard, but only 500 ft of duct tape, despite my efforts to not get "duck tape", we ended up having to cave on account of the expense of 500 ft of the stuff per team. The students were only allotted 2 2-hr sessions to build their craft amongst the other activities of the week. Today was the grand finale, the race across the pool.

Measure twice cut once. Or if you accidentally measure wrong and cut twice - we have duct tape.

The cardboard kayak that would become the duct tape Mako shark.

"We're going to float all four of us in this."

...and the races begin...

and hilarity ensued!!!

And the local news covered it... I managed to hide from the camera quite well.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interestingly, it is actually Duck Tape.

http://www.ducttapeguys.com/duckvsduct.html

gnat said...

I find the reporter's follow up comment pretty amusing: "whether a higher power or teamwork..."

Unknown said...

Man, that clip is even funnier when you have sound working.

I think I need "As with everything I do, I give the glory to God" to be my new acceptance speech to every compliment I get. (e.g. Nice hair cut km! - As with everything I do, I give the glory to God).

And were there actual calculations involved or did they just build cardboard boats for fun and try to hold them together with duct/duck tape?

gnat said...

They were given 4 2 hour mornings as follows:

Day 1: calculations & drawings

Day 2: building

Day 3: building

Day 4: racing

In all, they were allotted 6 hours to plan and construct. YEAH!