Boat Design Competition (Chris Kipp)

Author

Chris Kipp

Birmingham Community Charter High School

NGSS Engineering Standards

Materials Needed

The materials for this project are also its constraints. Students are to build a boat that will support their team using only cardboard and duct tape. Students may decorate the boat any way they like, but decoration materials cannot be structural. In other words, only cardboard and duct tape may be used to help the boat function.

Procedure

Day 1 - Hydrostatics

The first day starts with a lecture on buoyant force. Students learn the way to calculate whether or not an object will float, based on the mass and volume of the object. Time is spent on creative ways to calculate the volume of irregular objects. At the end of the lesson, students are given several irregular objects and asked to measure and calculate whether or not these objects will float.

Day 2 - Fluid Dynamics

Students are introduced to Bernouli's principle and its relation to an object moving through water. Students discuss streamlines and are shown how different boat shapes can affect a boat's motion.

Day 3 - Torque

This lesson involves center of mass and stability. Students experiment with lever arms and torque in an attempt to understand how paddling will affect the motion of a boat in the water.

Day 4 - Races

This is the day that students bring their boats and test them out in the pool.

Questions

Photos/Videos