Tinfoil Pirate Ship Drag Race
Introduction:
Avast! In this engineering-design project, ye students will design, build, and race wind-powered pirate ships on a 10-foot long water-filled drag race track. They will learn engineering design principles and apply physics concepts such as force, drag, acceleration, and center of mass.
What it Looks Like:
Students work in pairs to build a boat that can race under wind power the length of the tracks, which are filled to a depth of about 8 cm with water. As they develop and refine their designs, students are able to conduct three "official" time trials, which are recorded by me, and however many unofficial time trials they would like. Their fastest of the three official time trials is used to seed their boat in the tournament. The tournament utilizes a single-elimination bracket, with each matchup being a best of three sprints.
Timer Setup:
Tape two photogates together, and hook one up to each of the timers. These will be your "starting" photogates, when you move your finger through them you more or less simultaneously break the beams and start the interval timing. Construct a cardboard & duct tape guidance system that will steer a boats beam-breaking bowsprit into the finishing photogates.
Assessment:
I require that each group write up an engineering design process report (EDP Report) in which they describe what they did as they made one full lap around the engineering design process cycle:
source: http://www.doe.mass.edu/frameworks/scitech/2001/standards/strand42.gif
This report is scored out of 10 points.
Students receive 7 points for constructing a boat that can safely travel, at any speed, the entire length of the track and successfully trip the finishing photogate. In other words, students receive 7 points for completing a single successful time trial.
For each round a team wins in the tournament, they earn another point.
As an added bonus, the team that wins the entire tournament gets excused from writing an EDP.
The total project is score out of 20. This means that if you have an 8-team tournament, a team that makes a successful boat but loses in the first round cannot get a grade higher than an 85% (17 out of 20.)
What You Need:
To make the track
• A pair of 10-foot long aluminum gutters, ~$12/pair
• End caps for your gutters, ~$8 for four, make sure you get two "right" and two "left," and that they fit
• Gutter sealant, ~$6/tube, a 10 oz tube is more than enough
• A box fan, or equivalent ~$18
To run the races
• Two photogate timing systems. I use these, they're just OK.
• Skill with ringstands, duct tape, cardboard, etc., to construct the timing system as described/depicted in the "What It Looks Like" section.
• Time trial & tournament bracket spreadsheet file (attached at bottom of this page.)
To build the boats
• A bunch of aluminum foil
• A few rolls of duct tape
• Sheets of paper (option: pre-print them with the jolly roger.)
• Thin wooden dowels like these, but not hardwood, cut into 30 cm sections. You can use wire cutters to chomp through them quickly. ~$0.60/dowel
• A bunch of pirate figurines. These are the ones I use.
• A pirate costume for yourself. Obviously this is the most important item. My science department has communal pirate regalia, yours should too.
• Student handout (attached at the bottom of this page.)
Pirate regalia is required.
How Long Does It Take?:
I run this project over the course of three 47-minute periods (after Seniors have graduated and it's just me and a few Juniors looking to apply what we've learned.) Those three peridos break down as follows:
Period 1: Overview of the project, build a boat that floats and, hopefully, will be able to travel the length of the track.
Period 2: Refine/revise designs to get a boat that consistently moves fast down the length of the track, conduct official time trials.
Period 3: A few minutes of last minute revisions, then the tournament!