Boat-A-Float

BOAT A FLOAT

Hypothesis

I think that boat3, the widest boat, will do the best because it looks more stable and it's not too heavy on any of its sides. It also distributes weight very well because of how flat it is.

Boat a Float

I tried to find out what shape of boat does the best for holding weight (pennies). I think the 3rd boat, (the widest) will win by holding the most pennies. I did this by getting a tub of water and putting the boats in it, then filling the boats with pennies until they sank. And for a little realistic feature I pushed the boats a little and figured out if they’re functional.

I did my experiment by figuring out what boat designs I wanted and then I went to a 3D modeling site called tinkercad to make them. It’s important to make sure all of the boat designs are the same weight but have different structural features and appearances. I sent my designs to my science teacher, Mr. Fritz, and he printed all of them while I got a container to hold the water with. I was also trying to find pennies to fill the boats with so I could actually do the experiment. When the 3 boats were done printing I put them in the water, gathered the pennies, and filled them until they sank. For a little realistic feature I gave the boats a little push to represent them going to their destination.

When doing this experiment I collected some data so I could find out which boat did the best. My first boat was in a hexagon shape and had four floats on the bottom to help stabilize it, it also had a hole in the top, this is “boat1”. My second boat was half of a cylinder flipped over with a sideways cone on the front and a hole on the top, this is “boat2”. My third boat was an upside down flattened pyramid with four floats on it, one on each corner, this also had a hole in the top, and this is “boat3”. Now that the boat specifications are out of the way let's get to the data. I tested each 3 times. Boat1-24 pennies, boat2-23 pennies, boat3-33 pennies.

I learned that stabilization is key when it comes to boats because it takes a lot to sink a boat but not much to flip it. The best boat was boat3 because it was the flattest most stabilized design I made and it could hold about 10 more pennies than all the others. My hypothesis was correct because boat3 is the most stabile. My experiment was accurate because I made all of them out of the same amount of plastic and used the same weight of pennies. I could not think of any other ways I could make this better unless I made the boats have more variety in shape.

Procedure

1. I made all of the boats in tinkercad.

2. I made all of them the same amount of plastic.

4. I filled a bin with water and filled each boat with the limit of pennies it could hold.

5. I then pushed them slowly and saw how they perform.

6. At the end of all the testing I wrote down all of the data on my abstract.

7. If any of the boats sank then I would count the number of pennies in there minus one.