Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Spring Creek

Last week Deric, Christy, and I went to Spring Creek Outfitters to conduct an experiment for our project. Spring Creek is a local manufacturer of canoe and kayak accessories. Here we examined how different loading conditions effected the waterline of our given canoe. This is important to us because different waterlines create different wetted surface areas, which results in various drag forces. We also developed a way to measure the wetted surface area of the canoe. Using a waterline we found, we taped sheets of paper onto the bottom of the canoe. We were then able to add up the area of each sheet of paper to find the surface area of the canoe. Though this method may sound crude, we used the data we found to verify the results found using Pro-engineer (a 3-d modeling software). Now we know that Pro-e can be used to accurately find the surface area of any loading condition we may need to examine. We all had a lot of fun working in the field to verify work we did in the classroom. This is what IRE is all about.

Proofed by Deric

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