Sallyport - The Magazine of Rice University - Winter 2002

Rice Engineering Team Makes a Splash at Boating Competition - Students
Winter 2002
VOL.58, NO.2
Rice Engineering Team Makes a Splash at Boating
Competition
A group of Rice
mechanical and electrical
engineering
undergraduates sailed to
success in a solar boat
building competition last
summer.
Solar Splash, the world
championship of solar and
electric boating, is an
international
intercollegiate competition
in which entrants design,
build, and competitively
test manned solar-powered
boats. Now in its eighth
year, the event is
sponsored by the
American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The team of six Rice students
took fourth-place honors in the competition, which concluded June 24 in
Buffalo, New York. It was the first time a team from Rice participated in
the competition.
Their entry was the senior design project for a team that included recently
graduated mechanical engineering students Fernando Acosta, Sandra
Anuras, Tanya Hanway, and Chris Tracy and electrical engineering seniors
Rajiv Bala and Ryan Hammer. J. D. Wise, lecturer in electrical engineering,
and Robert Cunningham, lecturer in mechanical engineering and
coordinator for the department’s senior design projects, advised the group.
With a boat designed, built, tested, and driven by the team, they picked up a
list of honors: They were first in knot tying, first in visual display, second
in endurance, third in qualifying round, and fifth in sprint race. They took
fourth place overall and the top rookie award.
Cunningham said that success in the endurance competition was
particularly sweet because that phase of the contest “required good
equipment and skilled conservation of power supplied by both batteries and
solar cells. It also contributed the largest number of points toward the final
score.”
The grueling four-hour endurance race consisted of two two-hour races,
Cunningham explained. The first test was made up of two heats. The top
performers in the two heats met for the championship race, while the lower
performers competed in a consolation race. “We won our heat,”
Cunningham said, “but were beaten in the championship race by the winner
of the other heat, an eight-year veteran.”
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