Sara E. Thomas
Students will create their first boat strictly following the instructions from the website. Once students have completed their first boat and understand how it works they will begin planning their final boat. Their final boat should be tailored to its specific purpose and should be as efficient as they can make it.
What is efficiency?
Efficiency is the amount of work being done by your fuel versus the amount of work it can do. Every type of fuel has a maximum capacity of work it can achieve. When designing engines, the goal is to get as close to this maximum capacity as possible. There are a variety of reasons that the maximum efficiency of a fuel might not be reached. For instance, our fuel for our boat is wax. When the wax is burned, some energy is wasted as heat, and some energy is wasted producing soot. Therefore because of our choice of fuel our boat automatically has some limitations on its efficiency. To measure their boat’s efficiency students will measure the how far the boat goes and how long it takes to get there, using one “tank of gas” (completely filling the soda can piece with water). Once they have these two numbers determined they will be challenged to find ways to make their boat go farther and faster on the same amount of “gas”. All of this data will be recorded and analyzed in a format similar to the CAPT test as an enrichment to the science curriculum.
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- Understand the planning and process that goes into creating a machine.
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- Understand the importance of improving a product.
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- Looking at the boat as a form of art as well as a means of transportation.
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- Create a functioning putt putt boat, and then determine how it can be altered to improve upon its performance and efficiency.
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- Create three plans to scale for each view of their boat
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- Consider the use of their boat and how they can best use the space.
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- Determine what materials and shapes work best.
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- Use elements and principles of design to enhance the appearance of their boat.
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- Twenty Classes of 50 minutes.
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- see list on website
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- Constructing bare bones putt putt boat.
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- Researching what type of boat they’d like to create and noting its important features.
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- Creating prototypes to determine how they can increase the speed and efficiency of their boat.
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- Putting the final touches on their boat.