8p6 - Boating Making

Using Tinfoil, I created aluminum boats, we did this because we wanted to see how many pennies we could get a boat to hold. This allows us to learn about how density functions and how it can affect the boat's ability to float on water, ultimately helping us understand the concept of floatability a lot better than we originally could. Overall this project helped the students to learn about constructing and how to make it the most effective it can be.

During this process, I learned what I needed to do to make my boats able to hold more pennies. One way I did this was by making the bottom of the boat a lot thinner than the walls, this let me place more pennies due to the lack of density at the bottom. The other way I did this was by making the walls thick and tall enough so that we could fit as many pennies before water began to flow in. Overall, I learned quite a bit about how to structure stuff to make it fit as much mass as possible.

There are 7 standards which include the following, Empowered Learner, Digital Citizen, Knowledge Constructor, Innovative Designer, Computational Thinker, Creative Communicator, and Global Collaborator. I feel that my project ties to the Computational Thinker, I think this because when I realized the design of my first boat wasn't holding as many pennies, I decided to change/fix my design by making a plan on what boat would make the best outcome of penny storage. I also collected my data after doing my test so I could learn how the design affected my outcome on penny-holding. This helped my brain think of ways I could then improve my walls and how thick they could be to stop water from coming in due to the huge mass inside the boat sinking it.

A challenge I overcame on this project was figuring out how to begin my design. I was able to overcome this challenge by sitting down and trying to think of a blueprint, for example, when I took a marker and sketched out my plan on the foil so I could get the folds correct. Doing this helped me to gain knowledge and let me do the same build again without the marks. Overall this challenge helped me to do better in this project because it let me learn more about building my boat and making it worthwhile.

Given a chance to do this again, I would change how I decided to make my walls not as thick and tall as I wanted them to be. The reason why I would change it is because I felt like the final boat walls weren't as wide as I wanted them to be causing them to do worse than my test 2 boat. The reason this could've helped is because it would have let less water barge in due to the height letting it sail a little longer. Overall I still feel like I did well on my boats and that they were better than my prototype. ( first boat )

Hastings High School Career and Technical Education Program provides the following classes, Agriculture, Business Management, Computer Programming, Construction Trades, Culinary Arts, Digital Multimedia, Engineering Design, Finance, Insurance, and Marketing.  My project connects to the Engineering Design CTE program at Hastings High School. I feel this way because I had to make sure the boat functioned the way I needed it to, I did this by using techniques to make sure every part of the boat was on par to float. I also had to engineer a style of the boat so I could make it hold as much mass as physically possible before it sank, an example of an engineering technique I used was making the bottom thin so the density was less. Overall I feel that this project ties to engineering due to how you have to engineer and not construct a boat.

My project connects to careers in Engineering Science I think this because I had to make a safe design so that the pennies could safely float without putting too much pressure on the boat causing it to sink. Also similar to physics, I had to make a design that had a perfect weight so the ratio of weight to mass was good enough to hold a lot of the pennies without them over weighing the boat's mass. Overall I find my project to be tied around Engineering science due to how the boat's design was similar to the fields motives.