What Floats Your Boat?
May 21, 2010
On April 21, the Rock Creek Physics class completed their final engineering task of the year by going to the Onaga Life Fitness pool and putting their cardboard boats to the test. The class, along with Blue Valley’s Physics class, built row boats using only cardboard and duck tape. The parameters for the boats were that they could have three layers of cardboard (with a maximum thickness of one inch) and that the duck tape seams had to be a minimum of 12” apart. In addition, the boat could not be covered with any “waterproofing” materials.
The two schools met for our first annual competition. The “winning” boat is the boat that made it the length of the pool in the shortest amount of time. Unfortunately, a Blue Valley team won first place this year, but Rock Creek will be back to fight for that title next year.
As far as Rock Creek standings, Samuel Cott and Spencer Klocke were awarded second with a time of 17.40 seconds and Becca Snapp and Sara Liming placed third with a time of 18.65 seconds. Additional Rock Creek performances include: the teams of Dawn Nowakowski and Tyler Gardner and Jared Hawkins and Corey VanPelt each made it three‐quarters of the way down the length of the pool. And challenging themselves with a minimal boat design, Justin Fronce and Simon Johansson only made it a few paddles.
