A red-painted, 20-foot-long arch and girder bridge built by Cornell engineering students nailed second place for aesthetics in an upstate area competition, held this year at Cornell.

Eleven regional schools, including Cornell, were on campus April 13 and 14 for the steel bridge and concrete canoe competitions, part of the Upstate New York American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Student Conference. Cornell's ASCE chapter was host this year for the first time since 2000. Though highlighted by the bridge and canoe contests, the conference also offered networking opportunities for students.

Lynah Rink was filled to capacity the morning of April 14 with bridges and canoes of all colors, some of which were spray painted with school logos. Later that day the concrete canoe teams gathered at East Shore Marina to pass additional tests and race their constructions in Cayuga Lake.

Cornell steel bridge team captain Mary Williams '07 said that considering her team was disqualified from last year's contest due to structural flaws, she was happy with their finish this year. Teams were required to design bridges that were 20 feet long, 4 feet wide and no more than 7 feet tall.

"This is an improvement for us, and I hope that the underclassmen have the ability to keep this competition team alive and headed in the right direction," she said. The Cornell team also placed seventh in the overall competition, which was won by SUNY College of Technology at Canton.

However, the Cornell concrete canoe team, whose concrete-mix creation was named "IncREDible," was disqualified after failing a flotation test in which the canoe was submerged. After only partially resurfacing, the canoe split and cracked into several pieces. Other schools raced each other at East Shore Park marina Saturday afternoon as part of the competition.

"It's OK -- we expected it," said Cornell canoe team member Laura Whitehurst '07. The team had noticed cracking even before the swamp test began, she explained, and had hurriedly applied duct tape to the boat before submerging it.

Canoe team captain Jeremy Macht '07 said building a concrete canoe is "applying what we learn in a completely different way."

The students not only had to design the boat within certain size and weight specifications, but they also had to figure out a way to doctor the concrete so it would float.

"If you do it well, it's no different than a fiberglass canoe," Macht said. Montreal's École De Technologic Supérieure triumphed in overall canoe competition rankings.

The Cornell team mixed their concrete with styrofoam, glass beads and perlite, among other things, but the boat sacrificed durability for buoyancy, which led to its demise.