Science 10

Float Your Boat Experiment

For this experiment we had to create a boat out of a piece of aluminum, 2 toothpicks, 2 marshmallows, and 15cm of tape that would be able to hold the most amount of pennies without sinking. My group decided to make an original origami boat called the Titanic. This experiment was a competition to be able to see which group’s design would be able to float and not sink, but as well as hold the most amount of pennies. When we made our boat we also had a hypothesis which was: If we create a stable boat with all the materials provided then, the pennies we place gently at various locations into the boat will not cause the boat to sink because of the stability, shape, and sturdiness of the boat, which will hold up all the pennies at not sink at the same time. However, we placed last with our boat which held up 20 pennies. I believe our hypothesis was refuted because we weren’t able to create a boat that was sturdy enough to hold the most pennies. I decided the results of how the boat sank right away with 20 pennies would be able to show up that our hypothesis was incorrect, for the most part. There weren’t any errors that could have affected our results, in my opinion – everything was done/made how it was supposed to be and I believe those results reflected our work and onto our hypothesis. Some suggestions I would make to improve our experiment would be the actual design for the boat, to have it be able to hold more pennies and not sink – I would make the boat a smaller rectangular shape with toothpicks and marshmallows on the bottom and tape on the sides and bottom. Otherwise, this experiment taught me some new things to be able to now use my skills of creative and critical thinking for future projects and experiments. In conclusion, our hypothesis was refuted and we know now as a group what we would do again for this experiment to improve our results and hypothesis, however this experiment taught me quite a bit on the scientific method and it was very worthwhile.

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