Whatever Floats Your Boat!
Student-designed boats race down two water channels.Copyright 2018 Natalie Bowen, College of Engineering and Technology, Central Michigan University
For this challenge, students use a variety of common office and household supplies to design a boat. Their goal: to not only have the fastest boat, but to also take into account how much mass (or “cargo”) the boat can carry, the stability of the boat in the water, the total mass of the boat, boat aesthetics, and how much it “costs” to construct. A fan supplies wind and propels each boat down the lane of a small pool. Students work through the engineering design process as they brainstorm ideas with their teams, design and test their boats, redesign, and then retest to make the boats as efficient as possible.