What’s floating in the 719? Local students take their cardboard boats to the high seas
Michael Logerwell
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) – Students at Monument Academy High School set sail this weekend for a high-seas adventure in physics.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t the actual seas, rather a swimming pool, but the closest ocean is a little more than 1,200 miles away.
The goal was to see if students’ cardboard creations could withstand the waves.
Physics teacher Esme Wilhelm designed this competition for students to test their understanding of buoyancy, displacement, and the center of mass.
Students tell KRDO13 they had to do a lot of math to make sure they didn’t win the dreaded Titanic Award, which goes out to the group that sinks the most dramatically.
Taking home the Titanic Award are Josh Deniston and Kainoa Smith. Their boat was in lane one. It was not a leisurely voyage for Deniston and Smith, who almost immediately met the bottom of the pool. Despite that, they didn’t give up easily, willing the boat down the pool.
The first-place prize went to the team of Annalise Verones and Grace Dunston. They were the team in orange. Their classmates got a real good look at the back of their boat as Verones and Dunston waxed the competition.