Virginia Tech hosts Concrete Canoe competition

Ten months of work, thousands of hours, put in, all coming down to two days of competition. Concrete Canoe happens once a year. It's part of ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers). They also do things like steel bridge competition. "Do you want to more of this way ?" Coming off of last year, we didn't perform the way we wanted to. We recruited a bunch of new members really, you know, dug in and put in a lot of effort to get to where we are now. Now we're here, race day, after finalizing our canoe. Getting it sanded ready, smoothed out. A concrete canoe is, to be simple, just a canoe made of concrete. If you think about it as like there's steel boats, like cruise ships, large barges. It's just the volume of air inside of it allows it to float basically through Archimedes' principle. We race it, but it means more than that to us is all the effort we put in to build something that can not only look good but be fast float the best, It's a lot of work put into it. Mixed design, something that you got to get down. Hull design, creating something that's going to cut through the water but also give you that stability. I think the competition really reflects what an actual engineering proposal would be. I think the primary purpose is really to teach members to work as a team, to be leaders, and also just generally coming together to build a project. It's been so fun getting to see all these different schools from our region, talk to all of them, see what different things they've done. It's just been fun to be introduced to new people and see the energy of our team. Finally, we're here. We all have calmed down some, and it's been more fun than anything.