Week 22 Reflection

This week in physics was a bit messed up due to the testing, but we started discussing energy and what it is as well as some helpful tips for our boat construction. Today (Friday) we also completed a lab having to do with boats made of foil and the amount of mass they could hold in preparation for our cardboard boats.

On Monday we began discussing energy and different types. We came to the conclusion that energy is transferred to different objects. Kinetic energy, solar energy, and potential energy are different forms of energy, but they all actually has the same energy. For example, a check is in a different form than cash, but they're both money. It works the same way with energy. We also talked about the movement of several objects to display how energy transfers and is present in everyday life. If you kick a whiteboard, the potential energy from your foot turns to kinetic energy, which can turn to frictional energy (heat) as the board moves against the floor. I imagine that we will be talking more about this subject next week and will be expanding more on it.

Today we completed the foil boat challenge and my group's boat held 394.7 grams before sinking in the tub full of water. I learned earlier in the week the volume of the boat needs to be equal to the volume of water you want to displace. A boat floats in water because it displaces the same amount of water underneath it. It's also more likely to float if the boat is bigger because it has a greater surface area to distribute the weight. I am going to take what we learned in class with the equation to figure out the dimensions of our cardboard boat. To do this I will add both the rowers' masses, find out how much water weights that same amount, and play around with the dimensions so the volume equals the amount of gallons displaced. We're starting our boat construction tomorrow, but we need to figure out the specific lengths before we just start building.

Wish us luck!