Fifth graders apply the concepts they know regarding mass, volume and density in the previous activities to design a boat. Student teams must make a boat which can travel the waters of the Amazon Rainforest. Each group makes a...

Scholars build a boat using an assortment of materials such as foam plates, aluminum foil, and skewers, then test its buoyancy with pennies. Challenge boat builders to construct the strongest or fastest boat in a healthy competition with...

Save the soup! Scholars devise a flotation device using straws, balloons, foam, corks, and other objects. A can of soup must stay afloat for at least a minute with this device—your dinner might depend on it!

Use whatever material floats your boat. Working in groups, scholars decide on a type of metal and a type of coating to use for building a boat. They test their creations by leaving their boats in a pool of water for several days before...

Clay itself sinks, but clay boats float. Why? Young engineers build clay boats to learn about buoyancy. They test the weight the boats can hold using washers and then tweak their designs to make improvements, following the engineering...

Keep one's dream of becoming an engineer afloat. Learners apply the engineering design process to build a boat out of aluminum foil. They start with a square boat, then consider whether boats of different shapes would be able to hold...

Whatever floats your boat—with some additional weight. The first activity in a five-part series challenges pupils to design a boat to hold pennies. Using the design process, learners design, build, and test their boats, making sure they...

Let's go sailing! An instructive unit includes six lessons with multiple activities to teach scholars about density, center of gravity, buoyancy, and the Archimedes Principle. They can complete the final project of building a boat...

Don't just sink the boat. Using a closed container as a submarine, pupils experiment to see what to add to the container to make it float, sink to the bottom, and hover in the middle. After finding one option, learners see if they can...

What did the sea say to the boat? Nothing, it just waved. An inquiry-based lesson starts with a simple concept on the Archimedes Principle and challenges pupils to make something out of clay that floats. Then, they design...

Eureka! Using the clay boats made in the previous lesson, learners investigate the idea of buoyancy and water displacement to finish the last installment of five in a Floaters and Sinkers unit. Their observations during the activity...

This open-ended boat building exercise is meant to be part of a three-lesson series on ships. Links to the other two lessons are included. This particular part is mostly a group lab activity in which they build a boat, find its load line...

Sailboat design requires more than a half-circle and triangle sketch. After viewing a slideshow presentation that outlines the requirements for sailboat design, learners draw a design, perform the needed...

Want to get your students motivated in science class? Given only a piece of aluminum foil, assign groups the task of designing a "barge" that will support the weight of a bunch of pennies.  The group who is able to put the most...

Clay's as good a material as any to build a boat, right? An introductory lesson sets the stage for two activities associated with buoyancy. The first involves building boats out of clay, while the second uses these boats to measure the...

Students design and build full-size boats made out of two-liter plastic bottles, chicken wire, and plywood. Then they race the boats, with the boat's designers "manning the hull", in the school's swimming pool.

Work together to stay afloat. Using a paper boat, pupils connect properties of materials to their usefulness. They test different paper to determine how many pennies each boat will hold and learn that combining materials with different...

Harness the power of rubber bands of all things. A hands-on activity has scholars design and build paddle boats. They learn how the elastic potential energy of rubber bands can be converted to the kinetic energy associated with motion.

Students design and construct a boat out of aluminum foil and a few other simple materials. The boats then be tested by floating them in water, then adding mass until they sink. They explore the various shapes of boat construction.

Written to introduce pupils to buoyancy, this activity has collaborative groups work to design a floatable clay boat. They first observe that a stick of clay sinks in water and then are given their own stick to reshape into a floating...

Don't be a drag. Learners work in groups to design boats that move slowly. The provided reason for the activity is that a fish caught on a fishing reel is pulling the boat, causing it to move too fast. The STEM activity teaches the class...

Fourth graders explore the concept of mass and buoyancy. After building boats out of several materials, they predict whether each boat floats if certain objects are added. Students test their predictions and draw conclusions from their...

Students design a boat of aluminum foil and calculate the density of the boat. Washers are added to the boat until it sinks. Students then redesign boat to hold more washers and recalculate the new density.

A whole-group discussion kicks off a hands-on activity that challenges young engineers to build a sailboat using reusable materials. Participants gather recycled items to assemble their one-of-a-kind sailboat and test its ability to...