Duncan high takes class to the ‘high seas’ – Duncan Banner

Several dozen students of Duncan High School became the first do something never done before they successfully, or in some cases soggily, traversed the waters of the Simmons Center pool with only cardboard and duct tape boats to see them safely to the other side.

As part of the physics classes and the STEM class, students had to create a boat using nothing but cardboard and duct tape that had to float, be at least a meter long and carry one student.

Keely Cox, physics teacher, said it was a practical demonstration.

I was trying to show them that you can build a boat out of really heavy stuff if you do it right, she said. So they had to figure out buoyancy versus weight as long as the buoyant force is more, you are going to float no matter what you make it out of.

Gretchen Taylor, STEM teacher, said the students worked diligently with the concepts.

The concept was calculating the volume of the boat and that would get us the displacement and then you apply the density of water and use convert factors which we are big on this year to calculate the buoyancy factor, she said. This was a project that the students did on their own outside of class. It was a project that they worked on in the evening and on the weekends, even over spring break to build these boats.

Cox said it was also an exercise in cooperative skills.

The student groups went head-to-head as the boats were timed on their journey across the pool, until one boat was deemed the winner.

The a group of freshmen STEM class members came out on top, and 9th graders Anna McNurran, Lincoln Fitts, Ethan Howard and Jaxon Gregston had the fastest boat of the day.

McNurran said it took everyones input to get the boat ready.

It took a lot of all of our ideas putting them all together and discussing what we think would be best, what would work the best, she said.

Gregston, who manned the boat, said the group used a familiar model.

We tried to make it as close to an actual canoe possible, he said. We tried to keep it all one piece too so the water couldnt get in. (Because of) water displacement, there were some boats that were tipping over because there was only so much water being moved out of the way, so we had a flatter bottom that would keep us up right with out tipping.

All four agreed that getting to compete was a great experience.

Going head -to-head was really fun, Howard said. I liked to see that our boat actually worked in real life, not just on paper.

The teacher hoped to do this again next year because the students had a great time and learned the concepts well.

Originally posted here:

Duncan high takes class to the 'high seas' - Duncan Banner