Project Tacoma Narrows

Project Tacoma Narrows

Intrigued by recent developments in Concrete Canoe technology, this year's Comical team sought to harness the power of modal shapes. We've all seen the animations "Whoa, look at it go!" exclaimed my friend from Stanford "Looks like a champion swimmer to me!" We were all impressed by the technical language, so we decided, what the heck, let's try it. With the help of the Department of Defense and their secret weapon, the Super Hi Tech Entirely Remote Readiness Asset Prognostic And Diagnostic System For Impressing The Pants Off People And Getting Chicks (SHTERRAPADSFITPOPAGC), It was a simple matter to adjust our concrete, reinforcement, hull design, and paddling frequency to create a prototype canoe we dubbed, Project Tacoma Narrows, a nice name I saw in a magazine somewhere. Salman instructed them to paddle exactly in resonance with the canoe, at 3.2 strokes per second, and off they went!

The paddler dialogue went something like this:
Erik (bow): Harry, is it swimming? Like in the animation?
Salman (stern): Well, I can't exactly tell, what was the scale on that animation again?
Erik: 200 times.
Salman: Oh, so it's only really flexing like a millimeter, woo hoo.
Erik: Yeah I don't think it's swimming much. But wasn't it also supposed to flex and extend to return paddling energy like a cheetah?
Salman: Yeah, I don't think that's working either, see, when the canoe returns to normal shape from the flexed shape, it doesn't push forward because the rear end is not fixed in any way, it expands in both directions equally.
Erik: I see, and wait a minute, even if the canoe were flexing a foot or something, it still wouldn't swim like a manta ray, because the ripples do not proceed from bow to stern, they just stay in place, so all they are doing is pushing water directly outward tangential to our motion, that won't accelerate us at all!
Salman: You know what? I think our crafty competitors have outsmarted us. They tricked us into wasting all our time on this and I'll bet they've just been trading units for sanding hours this whole time!
Erik: I think we have greater worries than that my friend, I just remembered where I've heard of Tacoma Narrows before. Wasn't it that bridge that...
BOOM!

That was when Project Tacoma Narrows shattered into a million pieces. So all you canoe teams out there, this is for you. Learn from our folly, don't be swayed by those fast-talking modal scientists like we were.