Ending school with a day of science
Dover eighth-grade students spent the morning building cardboard boats to sail across Dover City Park Pool.
It was a sunny end to the school year and a day of science, swimming and duct tape as Dover eighth-grade students spent the morning building cardboard boats to sail across Dover City Park Pool on Tuesday, May 30. The students, led by science teachers Jeffrey Margletta and Shane Lester, designed, built and raced boats made of cardboard in a competition that lasted much of the day.
“We get to the pool at 8:15 in the morning,” Margletta said. “They have a pile of cardboard, and they each get two rolls of duct tape. Those are their basic building materials.”
The students have been studying concepts like buoyancy and liquid displacement, both critical when planning the design of the student boats.
“They’ve been working on these concepts this year and designed their own boats in class, making blueprints to work from,” Margletta said. “We made smaller sized prototypes, which we tested in class before building the actual boats at the pool.”
This represents the third year the entire Dover eighth-grade class has convened at the pool for boat races.
“We began in 2019,” Margletta said. “The first year we did it early in the year as a trial run in the first two weeks of school. We found that it was better to move it to the end of the year. It’s a great way to end the school year using the skills they’ve learned. They get there in the morning, and they start the project and finish it the same day. It’s a big thing for them.”
The students found the duct tape they were given to be a critical part of the cardboard boat-building process. The seams required careful taping and sealing, along with a good boat design.
Teachers stood by to help with X-Acto knives to help cut the cardboard sheets to blueprint specifications. “The length of the boat and the height of the sides pretty much determined how successful they would be,” Margletta said.
The students had to cross the pool and return without sinking for each of the nine heats, with each boat crossing three times. Ten of the boats sank into the blue waters of the pool immediately after launch, which Margletta explained would likely be caused by a faulty design.
“If your boat is long enough, it will support your weight better. We have learned that extra weight doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t float. It’s a matter of effective weight distribution. And if you have sides that are too high, you won’t be able to reach over them to paddle effectively. The length determines how well your weight is distributed, and those teams who took the time to really make sure their seams were sealed did better. Of course, some of the students have had practice with paddling, and that helped them as well,” Margletta said.
The student teams were ready with their boats by 10:30 a.m., and a parade was called as each team was announced to go from the large yard in front of the pool building to the rear where the waters awaited.
The first team to enter the water saw their boats collapse and sink as the students stepped into their floppy craft. After each of the races, the students piled their wrecked paper boats and stood by to cheer the next team.
By midday the winning team emerged: Ana Oxlaj-Pastor, Juliana Price, Amie Stine, Ali Miller and Sylvia Rini were able to cross the pool and stay afloat successfully through all nine heats.
Margletta said the school was grateful for the use of the pool for much of the hot summer day and to ProVia for the donation of cardboard sheets. He also credited the other Dover Middle School teachers. “All the eighth-grade teachers really step in to support and help with this,” he said.