For this engineering competition, each team of students spends the year building a solar-powered boat, then they gather at Champions Park Lake in June to compete and show off their skills.
“Students learn to use solar energy for transportation purposes and get hands-on experience with sustainable energy, energy management, and the importance of efficiency and good design,” event organizers said.
Organizer Jeff Morehouse said this is a team sport like you’d see in industries where each member has to have electrical, mechanical and boat knowledge.
“The contest is really founded by the engineering professors in their colleges simply to give hands-on experience to some of the students instead of formulas and testing like that on paper. They actually have to go out and building something — design it and build it and compete it,” he said.
“This is a big deal with a lot of the interviewers looking for people that have the experience of working with others and building the product.”
The event began mid-week, with registration and technical inspections done first, while the following days included five on-the-water competitive events.
On-site competitions include visual displays and workmanship. On-the-water events start with a sprint and endurance qualifier, which is followed by the slalom, a combination of speed and maneuverability. The final days are then spent in the sprint and endurance events.
Steven Guo, a senior at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, said the process of working on the boat was a “really fun experience.”
“Coming out to Springfield and being able to finally see our hard work come to fruition is one of the best parts of the competition. This project, this boat, has been something we worked really hard on the last year, so it’s really nice to be able to see the boat on water and moving,” he said.
Guo explained at CMU, they have a school club that’s open to all students of all ages and all years, so it’s nice to be able to collaborate with different classes.
“It’s nice to just be able to have the interdisciplinary between years, sharing experience of being able to work on this boat. It doesn’t really matter what your experience was because everybody could have something to contribute to this boat. That’s one of the best parts about this club,” he said.
Brian Piper, a University of Dayton graduate, said building the boat a “really fun process.”
“It’s great being at this competition. I love being an engineer. I love competing against all of our wonderful competitors,” he said. “Being at the competition, it’s really nice. It’s probably the most satisfying part of being an engineer is getting to actually see all of this stuff, everything that you worked on come to fruition.”
Awards are given to the winners of the Sprint and Endurance events and the Slalom. Students are evaluated based on technical reports, video presentation, workmanship and engineering design. Points are earned in seven categories.
The first Solar Splash competition was held in Milwaukee in 1994, but has been held in the Springfield region for the past several years.
Last year, Cedarville University won its 14th championship title after they finished with a score of 987.70 points out of 1,000 during the 30th annual Solar Splash.
For more information, visit https://solarsplash.com.
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