Design a Boat

thingiverse

Student designed boats - an 8th grade project. Students were challenged to design a boat to hold as many pennies as possible without sinking or capsizing. All boats were scaled and printed so they were 25 g. After testing students learned about buoyancy and density and then redesigned their boats. These are their second designs. Best boat in first generation could hold 37 pennies. Best boat in second generation held 79 pennies. How I Designed This Troubleshooting Student Designs Students designed their models using Tinkercad. A common error students make is to have gaps between walls. These can be hard to spot without rotating the model and looking carefully. Some student models don't have flat bottoms, in some cases it's easier to print them upside down, or turned on their side. You can also chop off a bit of the bottom to make a flatter more printable model, or print with support. Standards NGSS Overview and Background Student designed boats - an 8th grade project. Students were challenged to design a boat to hold as many pennies as possible without sinking or capsizing. All boats were scaled and printed so they were 25 g. After testing students learned about buoyancy and density and then redesigned their boats. These are their second designs. Best boat in first generation could hold 37 pennies. Best boat in second generation held 79 pennies. Lesson Plan and Activity About a week before starting the lesson on buoyancy the students were given the assignment and one period (50 minutes) to design their boat on Tinkercad. I checked their designs for problems (gaps in the walls, etc) and allowed them to make fixes. Students completed the first part of the lab report by photographing and describing their design (see PDF) All boats were resized on Cura to 25 g of plastic and printed Students tested their designs by floating them in water and loading them with pennies Students redesigned their boats Their new designs were printed and tested, lab reports were completed We discussed what they had learned Project:  Design a Boat Objective Design a boat that can carry a lot of pennies without sinking or capsizing, Audience This was an 8th grade project, but could work for grades 4 - 10 Preparation Most of the students had some previous experience designing models on Tinkercad Steps About a week before starting the lesson on buoyancy the students were given the assignment and one period (50 minutes) to design their boat on Tinkercad. I checked their designs for problems (gaps in the walls, etc) and allowed them to make fixes. Students completed the first part of the lab report by photographing and describing their design (see PDF) All boats were resized on Cura to 25 g of plastic and printed Students tested their designs by floating them in water and loading them with pennies Students redesigned their boats Their new designs were printed and tested, lab reports were completed We discussed what they had learned Results This is a project I've done in the past using aluminum foil to design the boats. Many students realized as soon as they saw their first models that they could design a better boat. After testing most students were able to make a new design that performed better. They learned that wider vessels were more stable, and that thinner designs with more volume could support more pennies.