Boat Building

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Image credit: www.teachengineering.org
Three objects that look the same in size and shape may not float in the water in the same way. For example, For example, if there were three blocks that were exactly the same size, one made of Styrofoam, one made of hollow wood, and one made of solid wood, each would float, but they would all float in different ways. The Styrofoam would float high in the water, the solid wood float low in the water, and the hollow wood block would float somewhere in between. This is because of how gravity and water pressure affect each block. The Styrofoam block isn't very dense and contains a lot of air, so it doesn't contain much matter. Since its mass is so low, gravity doesn't affect it very much and the water pressure at the surface of the water is enough to keep it afloat.The hollow wood block would be heavier, so it would have to sink farther down in the water before it would find enough water pressure to make it float. The solid wood block would have to sink still further before it would find enough water pressure to counteract the amount of gravity acting on it.

The reason why ships float although they often are made of a material that naturally sinks is mainly due to their shape. When a ball of steel, for example, is dropped in the water, it sinks, because all the force of gravity acting on it focused on one point in the water, so no amount of water pressure can counteract the ball's gravity. But when that same volume of steel is flattened out and shaped into a boat, the amount of gravity acting on it is spread out over a larger surface area, so the water pressure is able to counteract it.

Due to buoyancy, objects displace the same amount of water as their mass and the volume of however much of the object is in the water. If an empty canoe floating on the water weighed 120 pounds, it would displace 120 pounds of water. However, if that same canoe sank, it would displace more than 120 pounds because the canoe would have to weigh more that it did when it floated to sink. The same is true for if the canoe tipped over or filled with water - if it filled with water, that is obviously adding more weight, and if it tipped over it would float lower in the water and therefore displace more water as well.

This week, to show our understanding of buoyancy, density, and particles, we created boats using aluminum foil, modelling clay, and/or Play-doh, all of which are denser than water. The first challenge was to create a boat that floated, but then we were given the additional challenge of making it carry as much weight as possible without sinking. While building my boat, I decided that aluminum foil was the best material, higher sides made the boat stay afloat longer, and larger boats held more weight.

When testing and redesigning my boat I made a number of different changes, including making the shape more elongated, the bottom flatter (it distributed the weight better), the sides higher, and I added a couple extra layers to hold extra air and prevent leaks in the main body of the boat. The design that worked best was my final product. It was the largest yet so that the gravity acting on it was spread over a greater surface area, and higher sides let it sink lower in the water before filling with water. The boat design I tried that worked least well was one of my earliest designs, one that had a more traditional boat bottom, because it forced all the gravity acting on it to focus on less surface area. This made the design sink faster.

During class, we learned about volume, mass, density, and buoyancy through many different types of exploration. After all that we learned, I think it's important to remember these three central points:

  1. Materials that would usually sink in water can be made to float by shaping the material, so that the amount of gravity acting on the material is spread out over a greater surface area.
  2. Where something floats in the water is determined by how far down in the water there is enough water pressure to counteract the gravity acting on the object.
  3. The volume and mass of an amount of water displaced by an object is equal to the volume and mass of the object itself.
These three points can be used to determine how an object floats, why an object floats, and how to make an object float or sink.
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