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Activity
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Teach Engineering

Clay Boats

For Teachers 7th - 9th Standards
Clay itself sinks, but clay boats float. Why? Young engineers build clay boats to learn about buoyancy. They test the weight the boats can hold using washers and then tweak their designs to make improvements, following the engineering...
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Activity
NOAA

Boat Building Challenge

For Students 3rd - 5th Standards
Scholars build a boat using an assortment of materials such as foam plates, aluminum foil, and skewers, then test its buoyancy with pennies. Challenge boat builders to construct the strongest or fastest boat in a healthy competition with...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Taking the Boat to Manaus

For Teachers 5th
Fifth graders apply the concepts they know regarding mass, volume and density in the previous activities to design a boat. Student teams must make a boat which can travel the waters of the Amazon Rainforest. Each group makes a...
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Activity
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Teach Engineering

Buoyant Boats

For Teachers 7th - 9th Standards
Eureka! Using the clay boats made in the previous lesson, learners investigate the idea of buoyancy and water displacement to finish the last installment of five in a Floaters and Sinkers unit. Their observations during the activity...
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Activity
Teach Engineering

Keep Your Boat Afloat

For Teachers 10th - 12th Standards
Use whatever material floats your boat. Working in groups, scholars decide on a type of metal and a type of coating to use for building a boat. They test their creations by leaving their boats in a pool of water for several days before...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Transportation Systems: Two Liter Boat Activity

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Learners design and build full-size boats made out of two-liter plastic bottles, chicken wire, and plywood. Then they race the boats, with the boat's designers "manning the hull", in the school's swimming pool.
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Lesson Plan
Center for Precollegiate Education and Training

Buoyancy Boats

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
What did the sea say to the boat? Nothing, it just waved. An inquiry-based lesson starts with a simple concept on the Archimedes Principle and challenges pupils to make something out of clay that floats. Then, they design an object out...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

What Floats Your Boat?

For Teachers 4th - 6th
This open-ended boat building exercise is meant to be part of a three-lesson series on ships. Links to the other two lessons are included. This particular part is mostly a group lab activity in which they build a boat, find its load line...
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Unit Plan
Arizona State University

Physics of Boats

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Let's go sailing! An instructive unit includes six lessons with multiple activities to teach scholars about density, center of gravity, buoyancy, and the Archimedes Principle. They can complete the final project of building a boat on a...
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Activity1:47
DiscoverE

Everyday Engineering: Foil Boats

For Students 3rd - 8th Standards
Keep one's dream of becoming an engineer afloat. Learners apply the engineering design process to build a boat out of aluminum foil. They start with a square boat, then consider whether boats of different shapes would be able to hold...
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Lesson Plan
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Purdue University

Slow Boat Design

For Teachers 4th Standards
Don't be a drag. Learners work in groups to design boats that move slowly. The provided reason for the activity is that a fish caught on a fishing reel is pulling the boat, causing it to move too fast. The STEM activity teaches the class...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Buoyant Boats

For Teachers 4th
Fourth graders explore the concept of mass and buoyancy. After building boats out of several materials, they predict whether each boat floats if certain objects are added. Students test their predictions and draw conclusions from their...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Big Boats Up The River

For Teachers 2nd - 3rd
Using boats along in the Port of Albany as the focus, learners practice adding single-digit numbers and interpreting data. This lesson comes with the worksheets, resource links, and other materials to make it a worthwhile experience.
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Activity
Museum of Science

Paddle Boat

For Teachers K - 6th Standards
Harness the power of rubber bands of all things. A hands-on activity has scholars design and build paddle boats. They learn how the elastic potential energy of rubber bands can be converted to the kinetic energy associated with motion.
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Lesson Plan
2
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American Chemical Society

Using the Properties of Materials to Improve a Model Boat

For Teachers 2nd Standards
Work together to stay afloat. Using a paper boat, pupils connect properties of materials to their usefulness. They test different paper to determine how many pennies each boat will hold and learn that combining materials with different...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Buoyant Boats

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Learners design and construct a boat out of aluminum foil and a few other simple materials. The boats then be tested by floating them in water, then adding mass until they sink. They explore the various shapes of boat construction.
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Lesson Plan
DiscoverE

Foil Boats

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
How many pennies can an aluminum foil boat hold? That is the challenge in a collaborative activity designed to explore the concept of buoyancy. Learners use aluminum foil to build makeshift boats and test the weight they hold before...
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Lesson Plan
1
1
Teach Engineering

What Floats Your Boat?

For Teachers 7th - 9th Standards
Clay's as good a material as any to build a boat, right? An introductory lesson sets the stage for two activities associated with buoyancy. The first involves building boats out of clay, while the second uses these boats to measure the...
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Activity
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Teach Engineering

Rock and Boat

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Present the class with a question on whether the water level of a pond will rise they take a large rock out of a boat and drop it into the pond. Groups come down on all sides of the question and try to justify their answers. The activity...
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Interactive
Physics Classroom

Rocking the Boat

For Students 9th - 12th Standards
Sometimes it's okay to rock the boat! Science scholars manipulate wave properties using a fun interactive. Part of a larger playlist that dives into waves and sound, the lesson helps users work their way from apprentice to wizard by...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Activity: Float a Clay Boat

For Teachers 4th - 8th
Written to introduce pupils to buoyancy, this activity has collaborative groups work to design a floatable clay boat. They first observe that a stick of clay sinks in water and then are given their own stick to reshape into a floating...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Dragon Boats

For Teachers K - 3rd
Students create a model boat. In this art lesson plan, students identify what makes a boat float and use milk cartons to create their own boat.
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Propel a Toy Boat with Chemicals

For Teachers 5th - 8th
A simple cardboard or plastic boat is propelled across the surface of water when the surface tension is disrupted by adding detergent. Once youngsters see this in action, explain about the properties of water that make it possilbe:...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Barge Building: What Floats Your Boat?

For Teachers 4th - 8th
Students construct aluminum foil boats that float while holding the greatest number of pennies. They investigate the concept of water displacement, record their results, and watch a Bill Nye video on buoyancy.

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