The Ole Miss Student Chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers is hosting this year’s American Society of Civil Engineers’s Deep South Conference.
Throughout the conference, 300 participants from 13 schools in Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana and Arkansas will compete in events that are designed to test participants’ engineering skills and teamwork ability. These events include concrete bowling, steel bridge building, concrete canoe construction, surveying, a mystery event and a technical paper presentation.
The first event of the conference is concrete bowling, a new addition to the conference this year, which will be held today at the Oxford Conference Center at 5:30 p.m. Students must design a bowling ball out of concrete that can be used to bowl three frames without breaking.
Today, the teams will be given the rules and materials needed to complete their mystery event task as well. They have until Saturday to prepare for the contest, which will test their ingenuity and engineering abilities.
Grace Rushing is the vice president of the Ole Miss chapter of American Society of Civil Engineers and one of several conference coordinators.
“All the teams are very creative, and it is always fun to see their solutions to the competition challenges,” Rushing said. “The canoe races are also great because everyone is so competitive.”
For the next event, which will take place at Sardis Lower Lake, March 20 at 8 a.m., students must design, build and race a canoe made entirely of concrete. It also must be able to float after being submerged in water, light enough to for people to row easily and strong enough to hold four people. The winner will be eligible to participate in the American Society of Civil Engineers National Canoe Competition.
For junior civil engineering major Reed Zeiher, this is the most exciting part of the conference.
“I think it is fascinating that a material like concrete can be built to float in water,” Zeiher said. “Also, there is the possibility that it doesn’t float, which means some of the competitors will get a little wet.”
Following the construction of the concrete canoe, students will participate in surveying at Sardis Lake, which is a competition designed to test student’s surveying skills by challenging them to complete a variety of tasks as efficiently and accurately as possible.
The steel bridge, mystery event and technical paper events will begin at 8 a.m. Saturday at the Oxford Conference Center.
In the steel bridge event, students will design a bridge 20 feet in length that can be constructed quickly and hold a maximum of 2,400 pounds without falling. The winning team will be invited to the National Steel Bridge Competition where the best teams from all over the country compete.
The last event of the conference, technical paper presentations, will take place at 2 p.m. on Saturday. Students will present a paper that answers the question, “Should the engineer of record be held responsible for injury or death to builders or bystanders that occurs during the construction of his/her design?”
“I think it’s a great thing for the school of engineering,” said Jamie Oliver, junior mechanical engineering major. “It’s a way for our students to expand and apply their knowledge in a really fun way.”
