Does two and half hours seem like enough time to construct a boat to carry as many emergency supplies to Haiti as possible? In any case, this was the framework for the first Local BEST Engineering Competition taking place at Aalborg University on March 3rd 2010. 10 teams all consisting of four members and representing various fields of engineering; from civil engineering to computer science competed against each other in the main canteen on the campus area.

More specific, the task was to construct a vessel out of a selection of materials such as milk cartons, soft drink bottles, plastic bags, and wood that could transport M&M’s from one end of a water tank to another (about 2.5 m), only with the help of the wind generated from a fan – representing shipping emergency supplies across the Atlantic to Haiti.

As in all aspects of engineering, the competition was not only limited by the time limits and the materials available, but also by a budget which should cover both the expenses to the materials and the expenses to the emergency supplies. Before the competition started, all the teams were given $1000 BEST (“BEST bucks”) to spend during the competition. Therefore, the task was also to choose the right trade-off between constructing the cheapest possible vessel and managing the aspects of stability, sailing speed and – skills, point of gravity, hydrodynamics, etc.

With the contestants being students of a wide range of fields of engineering and year group, many different, innovating and interesting solutions to the given task were constructed during the competition. The winners were team “3*π*r+α” (decoding the rebus you get “3 girls + alpha”), closely followed by team “Underdogs”, and then team “Viking Masters Who Desperately Need Something To Put On Their Resumes Before Summer 2010”. The winning team was granted with fancy computer monitors and will go to Copenhagen in the end of March to defend the honor of Aalborg at the Nordic BEST Engineering Competition (nordBEC), where they will compete against teams from Sweden, Norway, and Finland.

Aftermath
The BEST Aalborg Engineering Competition is now finished.

It has been a pleasure to see all the teams working hard to finish the task. Everyone managed to make a presentation and everyone had fun so I will conclude the competition was successful.

It seems like every team had a very great day – they had fun, but they also needed to use some of their experience from the group work model in the university together with their engineering knowledge. BEST Aalborg offers trainings for perfecting this skill. So join us and get all the benefits of our organization.

During the event we got a visit from 24 Nordjyske. They made a small show about us, which is now on YouTube