TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Floats Your Boat?
Learners use modeling clay, a material that is denser than water and thus ordinarily sinks in water, to discover the principle of buoyancy. They begin by designing and building boats out of clay that will float in water, and then refine...
Utah Education Network
Uen: Nhmu: Boy, Is That Buoyant!
Learn how salt increases the density of water and creates a condition of buoyancy.
NOAA
Noaa: Boat Building Challenge [Pdf]
Read to find out about the first boat builders. Construct your own boat out of common materials to explore buoyancy.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Floaters and Sinkers
This lesson introduces students to the important concept of density. The focus is on the more easily understood densities of solids, but students can also explore the densities of liquids and gases. Students devise methods to determine...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Rock and Boat
Students observe Archimedes' principle in action in this challenge where a toy boat is placed in a container of water and a rock is placed on the floating boat. Students must explain why the water level rises/falls/stays the same based...
Alabama Learning Exchange
Alex: Teaching Measurement: Literature and Manipulatives
The tradebook, Who Sank the Boat? by Pamela Allen, is an excellent tool in teaching measurement. Students will engage in activities involving different types of measurement. In the story, five animal friends decide to take a boat ride....
Other
Sprk: Sphero Hydro Hypothesis Stem Challenge [Pdf]
SPRK STEM challenges are fun, interactive activities that challenge students to use creativity and team-work to move through simple steps of the design process in order to build Sphero-based creations. The Hydro-hypothesis challenge...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Clay Boats
Each student uses a small quantity of modeling clay to make a boat that will float in a tub of water. The object is to build a boat that will hold as much weight as possible without sinking. In the process of designing and testing their...
Scholastic
Scholastic Instructor: Seashore Science
Come and learn with this incredible seashore science resource. The content includes fun facts, experiments, reproducible activities, resources and more.
Museum of Science
Museum of Science and Industry: Online Science: Design a Submarine
Become an engineer, and design a submarine that moves in the water like a real submarine. Try making it sink, float, and hover in the water.
Alabama Learning Exchange
Alex: What's the Matter: A Sinker or Floater?
Students will explore matter that sinks or floats when submerged in water and that matter is categorized as either a sinker or a floater. Students will work actively in small, cooperative learning groups as well as gather in a whole...
Science Buddies
Science Buddies: Build a Rubber Band Paddle Boat
Build your own bathtub or pool toy from simple craft materials in this fun activity. You will build a rubber-band-powered boat that can zip across the surface of the water after you wind up the rubber band.
Other
Drexel University: Archimedes
An extensive site dedicated to the life and legacy of the Greek mathematician Archimedes. Content includes a timeline of Archimedes' life, an overview of several of his inventions, and numerous anecdotes isolating various moments in his...
PBS
Pbs: Nova: Infinite Secrets
Offers a look into the mind of Archimedes based on findings within newly discovered manuscript.