Floating & Sinking - Making boats

After our experiments a few weeks ago, Room 9 decided they would like to have a go at making some paper boats to see if they would float or sink.

Last Friday, we began designing our boats.  Miss Powell found some instructions to fold the paper into the shape of the boat.  These were a bit tricky to follow!  We were lucky to have Bradley to help!  Thanks Bradley!

Some of us managed to get the finished in time to test them out in our large plastic container.

We discovered that they all floated at first, but then after a short time, some began to sink.

When we had a chat about why this could be, there were many explanations from the children.

Maybe it was because there were gaps in them, maybe they got water on top of them, maybe the bottom got too wet.

Chelden suggested that we could all have a go at putting them in the water together to see whose lasts the longest.  The only problem is, our container wouldn't fit them all in!  Where else, could we put them instead?  How about the pool?!

So…this Friday we tried again.  Miss Powell brought out some card for some of us to try.  We had just enough time at the end of the day to take them over to the pool.  Thank you to Sonya for popping over with us and taking some photos!!

We only had about 5 minutes to try them out in the pool, but most of them survived well!  We tried a mixture of paper and card.  Lucas had a theory that the boats worked better if they weren't coloured in.  I wonder what we will discover next?!