Your challenge is to build a boat that can hold the most small coins before it sinks.
YOU WILL NEED:
- Large bowl of water
- 30 plus small coins per boat
- Aluminum Foil
HOW TO SET UP YOUR BUOYANCY EXPERIMENT
- Fill your bowl to 3/4 with water.
- Cut two 8″ squares of aluminum foil for each boat. Then form a small boat from the aluminium foil of one of them .
- Place 15 coins on the other square of tin foil (not the boat) and have the kids ball it up and place it in the water. What happens? (It sinks!)
- Place your boat in the water and see if it floats. Reshape if it doesn’t! Then slowly add the coins one at a time. How many pennies can you count before it sinks?
- Extend the challenge by rebuilding your boat to see if it can hold even more pennies.
Scientific Explanation:
You are in this experiment working with Archimede Principle – The lifting force of the water is always as great as the weight of the water that the object in the water displaces.
This experiment came from LittleBinsLittleHands.