Search through this blog and you'll see I've written many posts detailing the science experiments and demos I've done with my kids and in my classes. Recently I had an opportunity to try out a new activity for a group of elementary kids as part of a youth enrichment program I offered. In this activity we studied different boat designs and then the students each built a boat out of foil. The goal was to build a foil boat and then see how much weight it could hold before sinking to the bottom of a kiddie pool.
Building a foil boat is easy. Building a foil boat that holds a lot of weight is more difficult. Building a foil boat with only a specific set of materials is even more challenging. For this challenge students had the following materials:
Foil
Tape
Corks
Popsicle Sticks
Straws
Each student was given an imaginary pot of money of $500 and they had to buy the above materials. Some materials, foil for example, were more expensive than others. Even tape had a cost per inch. Students had to carefully decide which materials to buy with the limited amount of money. Once the boats were built the students took turns trying to sink them. Weights were slowly added and then measured when the boat sank. We had one boat that topped 1/2 a pound. That may not seem like a lot, but given the limited materials, 1/2 a pound was pretty impressive! The kids had fun. I had fun and this is definitely an activity I will plan again with students.
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