Sink or Swim: Physics Boats Don’t Hold Water

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The "Matt-Gia-Cole" (pronounced "Magical") trio won first place in the competition. (Atzin Galvan/Lincoln Lion Tales)

They dug into dumpsters for them. They asked coffee shops for them. They stole them from other groups. They had bags full of them at home. Who are “they” and what were they after? They are the Physics students at Lincoln, and they were on the hunt for cardboard boxes and milk cartons.

For two weeks, all of the Physics students worked intensely to built boats out of cardboard, cartons, and duct tape. On May 20th, the boats were tested out on the pool deck. The competition took place during 7th period.

Each classroom had their own race. The top two winners from each class moved on to the ultimate showdown.

Lion Tales spoke to Ms. Frandsen and Ms. Fuller and received a background on the boat project.

According to Ms. Frandsen, this is the 4th year of the project. The goal of the project was to calculate the dimensions for and build a boat out of cartons and duct tape that could support two people.

Besides the “bragging rights,” winners of the boat competition would receive carton trophies that were made by Ms. Frandsen herself.

In an email sent to Lion Tales, Ms. Fuller explained, “Students designed the boats to answer the following driving question: How can we use physics to construct a boat that can transport two students across the school pool?”

According to Ms. Fuller, the project was announced at the beginning of the semester, giving enough time for students to collect cartons or boxes. She said that the kids had been working intensely for the two weeks prior to the race. Ms. Fuller expected this event to be fun.

And sure enough, it was fun! The boat race itself drew a large audience, ranging from Lincoln students, to faculty members, to parents with small children as well.

Most of the boats were disqualified when they either failed to pass the initial “float test,” or sunk or flipped over during the course of the race.

Nonetheless, viewers were quite pleased with this event. Gabriel Richardson, a sophomore student at Lincoln, commented, “This made me want to be in Physics even more. It was so cool to see the different boats and their creativity.” Richardson’s favorite boat was the winning boat, and although he said that boat seemed a bit unfair, it was still “smart and resourceful.”

Lion Tales spoke to the winners of the boat race. These students, Matthew Pietrusewicz, Cole Andrews, and Giovanna Echivarre-Morelli, named their boat “Matt-Gia-Cole,” pronounced as “Magical.”

“We went fast,” said Pietrusewicz, a member of the group.

“Luckily we were both evenly weighted, so it was very magical,” added Echivarre-Morelli. “We built the entire boat in about 3 hours.”

Since the winning boat resembled a surfboard, you could say that the members of the winning team “surfed into the battle.”