RANDOLPH AIR FORCE BASE, Texas –
Under a bright blue sky, juniors and seniors from Randolph High School met in teams of two for a race from one end of the Parr O'Club pool to the other in boats made only of cardboard and duct tape.
The members of the teams wore costumes and had decorated boats in themes to match. They laughed and taunted each other in good-spirited competition, but underneath the fun was a serious lesson in applied physics and pre-calculus.
The race was the culmination of a joint project between Karin Dentino's physics classes and Mike Haug's pre calculus classes at RHS, where the students learned about the behavior of fluids, buoyancy, pressure and Archimedes' Principle.
Archimedes' Principle says any object floating in liquid displaces its own weight of that liquid.
The students designed scaled-down versions of their boats in class to figure out the volumes of their boats, the water displacement and maximum weight the vessel will hold, Ms. Dentino said.
"They then use these designs to come up with the larger models made from only duct tape and cardboard," she said. "They had to put at least two people in the boat and transport those two people two lengths of the pool."
She said the students tested how effective their calculations were for their particular hull design, including calculating where the water line should be.
"The pre-calculus students also use many of their calculations from the year to help illustrate how math can be used in real life," Ms. Dentino said.
The students had some help along the way with their hull designs and they were given one roll of duct tape for each team; however, they were on their own for cardboard and additional tape. The boats were designed in a four-day period before and after school and during class.
The boats had varied hull designs including flat bottoms like a barge or swamp boat and v-shaped like a schooner. Some boats had pontoons made from concrete forms. One had a table with table settings for afternoon tea while another boat was made from the slick cardboard from store packaging.
"Fortune favors the bold," said Nick Nowland, RHS senior and a member of the Glamorous Glennis team, the first to successfully traverse the pool. "Ours is more of a barge and not a speed boat. We tried to keep the seams above the water."
He said they used cardboard they found and tried to have as few seams as they could, keeping the bottom flat. The floor of the boat had several layers of cardboard which made it stiff and buoyant.
Some teams had better boats while others had better costumes.
"Who lives along the shore?" a member of the Pirate Team, junior Joe Probus, shouted to a competitor after their boat fell apart at the edge of the pool. "You have to sink with pride, man."
The Pirates' boat also sank, but in the center of the pool while they continued paddling, without listing or floundering.
If a boat didn't make it all the way, the most the students lost was 10 points, as long as it floated for at least three seconds with passengers. In addition to class credit for successfully traversing the pool, three teams earned awards for being the fastest, sinking the best or having the best theme.
The Pirates, dressed in pirate costumes, earned the Titanic Award for the best sinking. Seal Team 6 earned the overall award for the fastest time. The Tea Party team and the Yacht Club team tied for the supreme theme award.
"We got full credit for making it there and back," Nick said.