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Annual boat races show how physics apply to everyday occurences
Story by Cassie Reilly
The Physics fifteenth annual boat race took place on Feb. 27, 2009. Paul Krzyzaniak had his two accelerated physics classes make cardboard boats and race here in the PHS pool.
Every year the balcony is full of students who come to watch their favorite boat win.
One of the reasons the boat races are hosted is due in part to the unit on buoyancy and to break up the monotony of the winter. Out of the 23 participating boats, only nine sank.
The winners of each class were seniors Grant Boeckmann and Jesse Easley, who finished in 73 seconds and came in number one overall, the winners of the other class were seniors Brandon McMullen and Mike Manzeck with 101.63 seconds. In second place for the first class were seniors Sam Poullette and Logan Roy with 124.7 seconds and third were juniors Matt Suemneict and Greg Poser with 182.9 seconds. For the second class second place went to seniors Emily Connor and Robert Peschke with 98.06 seconds and third were seniors Caitlin Olig and Megan Tervo with 115.6 seconds.
A participant in the races, senior Katherine Rosploch thought that Boeckmann and Easley would win because of their boat design. Other people, including Krzyzaniak, felt that Boeckmann and Easley had a good chance of doing well.
Krzyzaniak thought, “The boats I could see doing well before the race started were seniors Roy and Poullette, Boeckmann and Easley, Connor and Peschke. Of these boats, all of them did well and finished.”
The requirements of the building the boats is that students have to make the lightest boat that travels 100 yards the fastest.
The only things that the students get to use as materials are one box, donated from Sargento and 60 yards of duct tape two inches in width.
While racing, the requirements are that the two members of the boat must be sitting in the boat at all times. Some of the students watched the video of last year’s boat races to see what went wrong with the boats and what the strengths of some of the boats were. The students thought this was a very helpful preview that was influential to their own boat designs.
The idea for the boat races came to Krzyzaniak from another physics teacher in a different district, 20 years ago. The only thing is that they used Styrofoam and he thought that that would be too messy and break apart easily in the water, so he decided cardboard would be better.
“It [doing the boat races] gives them [students] a break from all of the school work and academics . . . also seeing if their creation works [causes students to enjoy the race],” said Krzyzaniak.
Why some of the boats sank was because most of the teams either flipped their boat at the beginning or they built the sides to short. The strength of the boats that made it were that they didn’t sink too far in the water, the design was important and the physical strength of the members in the boat.
This is one of Krzyzaniak’s favorite events of the year along with the annual physics trip to Six Flags. He also thinks it is nice to see the two to three hundred students who show up to support the races.
Senior Ashley Dippel, who attended the boat races, said, “I liked watching my friend’s entire race. It was a great experience.”
The boat races will be held again next year for the 2009-2010 accelerated physics classes. |
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