As this is the first every post for my classroom, you have something to learn before moving on. We LOVE Science Max. If your unfamiliar go check it out right now. You won’t regret it. https://tvokids.com/school-age/science-max-experiments-large-0
Welcome back. Hope you enjoyed which ever episode (or episodes) you watched.
Last week we watched the gravity boat episode.
I realized I had some old styrofoam insulation in my garage so the the next 2 days were devoted to making boats! I’m sure my janitor hated me, but it was worth it.
For two days my class was fully engaged in building and remodeling their boats. They took concepts from the video and applied them, admittedly with mixed success. With a little more time, I think some of the more creative ideas could have worked. One Student decided to try and make a siphon to refill his cup as the boat went. Unfortunately we could get the straw to start the siphoning process. Another student made a tower on her boat to try and the water moving faster. Her boat capsized if it had too much water and so could never get enough water put in to make it to the end.
They modified their boats after each trial to try and get better results. They decorated, restarted and no one gave up. I’m pretty sure they would have worked on them all week if I’d let them. Below are some of the boats we made.
So here were the parameters. The primary goal was to get the boat from one side of our container to the other end. The container was 90 cm long. We put a limit of a 23 cm length on the boat, so that they hopefully had an equal distance to travel. I forgot to take into account the straw coming out the back, so technically some of the boats were longer than 23 cm. The only power for the boat was provided the water poured into the cup at the start.
Their materials were a piece of styrofoam, a small plastic cup, a straw and some craft sticks. They were allowed to colour or decorate the boat however they wanted.
The categories to compete in were fastest boat, slowest boat (that still made it to the end) and most consistent time over three runs. The fastest boat made it in 5.38 seconds and the slowest made it in 20.89 seconds. the most consistent boat was within 1.5 seconds between its three runs. About 80% of the boats in the actual trails didn’t make it all the way to the end. Mainly due to spinning or running out of water
For fun, I created categories for boatiest boat and prettiest boat that the class did a secret vote on. This worked out really well as the boats that won those categories had not found success in the speed trails.
As a follow up. The students had to map out what they would change to their final design if we were to do it again.