Every year, engineering classes from many different high schools meet at the Bettendorf Lagoon to show off their latest project. The project is a boat made entirely out of cardboard. Teams of two to four students work for a few weeks designing prototypes for boats and then build them.
There are certain restrictions to the boats. The structure itself has to be made out of cardboard. No plastics or metals can be used to reinforce the structure or make it up. A certain type of glue was provided to the students by the teachers and was the only glue substance that could be used. Masking tape could also be used to hold seams together, but it couldn’t cover the whole boat. A few layers of paint to the finished boat were also allowed to help keep water out. All of these rules applied to the paddles as well.
Michael Meyer, senior, said, “It was a very challenging project. It took a lot of time and my group had to come in a lot after school to get it done. It was overall pretty fun; I just wish we would have had more time to make it better.”
The event took place on Friday, May 12. It was the ninth year that the event has taken place and a total of 49 teams entered. More than 128 students were at the event throughout the day. One by one, the teams tried to row their boats around the island after setting off from the dock. The first place team was from Pleasant Valley. The team included Zach Garner and Seth Hamby with a time of 2:29.8. Second and third place were both Bettendorf teams with times of 3:18.8 and 3:38.5. Cam Peer, senior, said, “I didn’t get in the boat, but it was fun building it and watching my teammates go out to try to get the boat to work and eventually watching them sink.”
