Students attempt to stay afloat during the 25th annual Cardboard Canoe Races at Cedarville University

Cedarville University students, staff and faculty attempted to make it to the finish line and stay afloat during the 25th annual Cardboard Canoe Races Friday.

Teams designed and constructed a cardboard boat that could carry two team members across the university’s Cedar Lake quickly and without sinking. Each team was only provided 40 feet of 41.5-inch-wide coated cardboard and a 100-meter-long roll of 48 millimeter-wide packaging tape to create their boat.

“The students typically spend 10 to 12 hours outside of class designing and building their boats, which shows their dedication to this project, said Dr. Bob Chasnov, dean of the school of engineering and senior professor of engineering. “They realize that their grade will not suffer much if they lose the competition, so they are more likely to have fun with it.”

Freshmen engineering students from either mechanical, computer science, electrical or the civil engineering programs handled the first part of the competition.

“This is the freshman engineering students’ first opportunity to design, build and test a project, which is very important in the engineering world,” said Chasnov. For the students, the test is the competition. They are applying everything they have learned thus far in the semester. It is an excellent team-building experience.”

The race takes places each year during homecoming weekend.

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