So school just started, and our first science project is making a boat out of cardboard and paddling across the pool in it. Hopefully without sinking. Me, being the lightest kid in my group, am getting stuck in the boat. I really don’t want it to sink, so I need help figuring out how big to make the boat. We get 2 huge cardboard boxes, and 1 roll of duct tape. That’s it. Just 1 roll. I’m mad about that. But anyway, I weigh a little less than 100 pounds, and I’m not sure how much the boat is going to weigh once we build it. How much surface area are we going to need to displace the water so I float? And any tips on what shape to make the boat, how deep it should be, and how to strategically use my duct tape? Thanks for everything!
Tape the boxes to form a single rectangle, bottoms down
Tape over any obvious leak points.
Put in the pool
Sit in one box, feet in the other
Paddle briskly, you don’t want the cardboard to get waterlogged.
Guessing that each box has it least 18 x 18 inch bottom dimensions, and total weight (you and the boxes) is about 100 lb, the boat will sink less than 6 ins. in the water.
Go for it . . . . you can do it
A cubic foot of water weighs 63 lbs so your weight plus the weight of the box will displace around 2 cubic feet. That’s the easy part. The hard part is to make it stable. Your center of gravity will be far above the waterline, making the cardboard boat highly likely to turn over. If you can fit into one box and then use the other box to make outriggers to keep your box upright, that would be the best approach.