Sinking Ships!

Thursday 17 June 2021

We’ve continued to investigate the idea of density this week in Science. The children were asked to design a boat that would hold the most weight without sinking. They were only given plasticine and tin foil. They got their creative hats on and built some great boat designs. They had to think about the weight of their boat – they knew their boat had to be less dense than water density. Some groups increased the surface area of their boats too as they realised this helped with buoyancy. First we tested which boats floated – some boats were eliminated straight away as they promptly sank. I won’t be booking a cruise on any of those boats!

The successful boats went onto the next round where we added cubes to test how much weight they held before sinking. The majority of boats held between 3 and 9 cubes. The winner held 110 before sinking! This was amazing. I think there is a career in boat building on the cards for the winning group!