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Les Courses en Folie de Gatineau: 1st place for Polytechnique's concrete canoe team

July 23, 2014 - Source : NEWS
On July 5, Polytechnique's concrete canoe team took first place in the third edition of the concrete canoe races held at the Les Courses en Folie (“crazy races”) festival in Gatineau.


Polytechnique students beat paddlers from Ryerson University and University of Toronto. The team won the day's three races and snagged its second consecutive title.

Gatineau's Les Courses en Folie is a festival featuring various unusual races, such as a soapbox derby and crazy raft races. For three years now, the festival has provided great visibility to universities with its series of concrete canoe races. The event is an opportunity to admire the work of future engineers and to learn how concrete can float!

Gatineau residents visiting the shores of Lac Beauchamp chatted with Polytechnique students to better understand the project and the team members' motivation. “People had a hard time understanding the project at first glance, since usually concrete is a heavy material that doesn't float,” said François Bissonnette, a third-year civil engineering student at Polytechnique and director of the concrete canoe project. “But after seeing the race and talking with a few members of the technical society, they were impressed by the engineers of tomorrow!”

Challenges for the coming year
Several challenges await the team in the coming year. First of all, the committee is changing. A number of members will be leaving the team once they graduate. A considerable number of the remaining members will also be leaving for student exchanges. The team's solid core is ready to take Polytechnique Montréal to the top ranks of the coming North American competitions!

The committee also wants to review its concrete pouring method in order to reduce manufacturing costs and gain better control over the final product. The committee will be carrying out a study focusing on concrete, in the hopes of improving the recipe and reducing its density by at least 10% compared with earlier formulations. The improvement would help improve the canoe's floatability and speed.

About the concrete canoe committee
Since 2006, the committee has sought to innovate by designing and building a concrete canoe in order to enter the ASCE Regional Concrete Canoe Competition (a conference in upstate New York), the Canadian National Concrete Canoe Competition and the Les Courses en Folie festival in Gatineau. In late summer 2013, the committee set a new goal: to enter the American National Concrete Canoe Competition. The team must also plan the entire project and seek sponsors. The students' involvement helps them develop technical, relational and organizational skills that will serve them in their future careers. The team is made up of some twenty committed students, who invest time and energy outside their studies to carry off an extraordinary technical challenge.

Congratulations to the whole team!

See also:
Concrete canoe website
Concrete canoe Facebook page

 

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