Engineered to weigh as little as possible, the canoe weighs 250 pounds with a glass mosaic on the bottom and the nickname ‘Kiss Our Glass’ tagged on its side. The canoe is stained with eco-friendly colors – black, blue and white – as it was not available in red, UNLV’s official color.
The concrete from which the canoe is made weighs 54 pounds per cubic foot, about 8 pounds lighter than water. Crushed glass has been used to blend it with tiny glass bubbles. Hollow glass beads about the size of ice cream sprinkles creates little air pockets inside the canoe lined with a carbon fiber reinforced with mesh and tiny metal cables.
Led by 22-year old Hearn, a senior majoring in engineering at UNLV, a seven member team of UNLV engineering students have been working to build the canoe since May 2008.
Noe Santos, responsible for figuring out how to make this particular blend of concrete, explains that any old concrete can not be put to use to make this work. The rules of the competition states that the canoe must float back to the surface after being submerged.
Apart from judges evaluating the look of the canoe and the canoe taking part in races in actual bodies of water, technical papers also need to be presented as a part of the competition. Points awarded for aesthetics, responses to questions and the technical paper are combined with a team’s finish in a variety of races — sprints and slaloms — to determine the overall winner.
Hearn, who also co-captained the team last year, says that team members have spent two weeks sanding the model. The team took the boat out to a man-made lake at Desert Shores and rowed with it on March 14, 2009. The boat floated back to the surface after they submerged it. The members are also practicing in a traditional fiberglass canoe to work on their speed.
