This is my page for STEAM 9, where I will be blogging on special events

Cardboard boat races

This is a fun event that all people in the STEAM program get to do in my grade.

Process of building the boat

The image below shows one of the pieces of cardboard we got to build the boat.

The image below shows a line we drew to cut over. We made all sorts of measurements like these to know where to cut and how to make a good boat.

The image below shows two walls of our boat standing up.

The image below shows a triangle which is the front of our boat. We made the front of our boat pointy, because it’s probably likely to go faster that way.

The image below shows our boat fully completed with all the finishing touches. We covered the outside of the boat with waterproof tape, because that part of the boat was going to be in contact with water. In the inside of the boat was a good spot to use duct tape to hold all pieces of the boat together.

Factors in our race

A factor that helped us in the race was that we put two people in the boat to paddle, which made the boat go twice the speed as one paddler. This is most likely why we won the race.

We had a factor that didn’t help us win in another challenge, which is called the floating challenge. When we built air chambers beneath the boat, we made them a little too wide in my opinion. The reason why I think they were too wide, is because there was a leak in the air chambers, and when the leak filled up the air chambers, the boat started to sink.

Improvements for the next boat race

Some improvements we can make for the next boat race is that we can make the air chambers a little less wide.

We can also improve our next boat by doubling the outside of the boat with waterproof tape, since a leak got in the air chambers.

Did the mass in our boat affect our race

The mass of the paddler didn’t really affect the race, because our boat was perfectly fine for a while with two people in it. The boat was also able to stay afloat and not sink at all for some time.