Sink or Float: Boat Design Challenge

In Science, we have accepted Ms. King’s challenge to make a boat to test what materials float! We spent time on Monday, testing different objects and making predictions if they would sink or float. From this, we decided what would make a good material for a boat to hold lots of counters. The boat with the most counters will be the best flotation device. Ms. King said we could bring in something from home to make our boat.

Before we started making our own boats. Ms. King let us see a neat science trick. When we tested a brick of plasticine, we found it sank. She challenged us to think of a way to see if it will float. We continued to test our plasticine boats until we found that it could float. We worked in partners to create a boat for our team. Here is what we found:
– Josiah & Nathan’s boat won with 48 counters
– Ryan & Cohen’s boat came in second with 46 counters
– two boats could not float because they sank to the bottom
– we couldn’t leave our boat a ball of plasticine because it sinks
– we can’t have cracks in the boat or it will sink
– you need sides to be medium sized
– we needed to stretch out the plasticine so it wasn’t a ball so it could sit on the water
– we needed to have walls so the water wouldn’t get in because we had to add counters which push the boat down
– we needed to hold in the counters

From our plasticine boats, we learned to do a couple things differently to make our next boat work better. We can’t wait to build our boats and test them in the next challenge. Stay tuned for our results!