Miracles of Science Buoy USD Contest

They walked on water Saturday at the University of San Diego.

Not that students and faculty did anything sacrilegious at the independent Catholic institution.

Rather, their attempts to traverse the 25-meter width of an Olympic-size pool were all in good applied scientific fun, part of a practical engineering problem posed for students:

Design human-powered buoyancy shoes and propel yourself across the pool.

USD Provost Sister Sally Furay even came up with the contest name, “Walk on Water,” and it was sponsored by the Department of Electrical Engineering to show students that there’s more to their discipline than just theory and number-crunching.

Organizer Michael Morse, a USD engineering professor, claimed more spectators than the nearby America’s Cup has attracted so far, and no one argued his claim of running USD’s contest in less polluted waters.

The dozen entries ranged from ordinary to extraordinary, although none were fully sublime, and all cost competitors $75 or less in parts----though there was no limit on creativity, or, for that matter, on non-university entrants.

Undergraduate Ron Montehermoso’s “USS Never Sail” proved prophetic--he never had a chance to prove his design of two inner tubes attached to square Styrofoam floats after the left tube blew up launch-side.

Most of the entrants favored variations on a common theme: Styrofoam floats with some sort of Plexiglas keel or fin arrangements underneath.

“The buoyancy part wasn’t the hard part,” undergraduate Dominic Pimental said. “Rather, the hard part is how to make yourself go” across the water.

The “Two Shoes” entry that he and four classmates came up with got them about a third of the way across the pool before Pimental lost forward motion and his legs went out from under him.

But that was better than the faculty entry of professors Kathleen Kramer and Ernie Kim. Wearing plastic-wrapped cardboard shoes in the shape of Big Ben clock towers, their “Das Boot” claimed first place for quickest dunk of a walker, with Kramer splashing down within five seconds of push-off.

“Piranha Dancer,” a non-USD entry, claimed first place, as walker Ann Shipley sailed over the glistening surface twice in under two minutes, with her best time a phenomenal 1 minute, 19 seconds.

Shipley, an engineer at UC San Diego’s Center for Astrophysics and Space Science, teamed with engineer Joth Layton of Rohr Inc., a Chula Vista-based aerospace firm.

The pair came up with two purple Styrofoam boards--”sort of fancy boogie boards”--ribbed on the bottom and augmented with a small “secret Plexiglas keel.”

When Shipley moved forward with her “shoes,” the underside ribs and fins pushed her shoes slightly out of the water. When she moved her foot back, the fins pushed against the water, propelling her across.

Student Bobbi Hannack and her husband, Fred, used computer disks as fins underneath their Styrofoam shoes, and came within a foot of going the distance when Fred collapsed face forward into five feet of water.

Rolando Ogot managed to complete the course despite moving backward for a while when the triangular design of his fins resulted in wide turning motions.

“Maybe we should have tried a few more designs,” conceded Maurice Lopez-Hodoyan, Ogot’s fellow student designer.

Daniel Nguyen and Richard Nguyen (no relation to each other) found that fellow student Tarek Derbas miscalculated slightly with an off-beat design of three surfboards strapped together, to be balanced with one foot, while the other foot became a human “fin” to paddle in the water.

Daniel tight-roped for several yards before toppling sideways into the drink.

“The ultimate lesson is that the joy of all of this is in the process,” a grinning Richard Nguyen said.