Aluminium boats with marbles

Today, our goal was to build a boat that could hold the most possible marbles, using a piece of aluminium foil. We had to build two boats, and try to improve our design between our first and second boat. My team consisted of Me, Kyle, and Matthew.

Rules

• You may only use a single piece of foil to build your boat
• You may not touch or adjust your boat once it is in the water
• You must add marbles one at a time

Our plan

Type-up of plan

Make a hat boat and drop marbles in.

• Strength: floats because of air pockets.
• Strength: Sides hold the marbles in
• Weakness: It's tin foil.
• Weakness: Sides could fall apart.

What did the boat do?

Evaluate and Improve

A few common problems between all the tested boats are that a few are too small, or the marbles roll around the boat and unbalance it.

Good ideas are deep bowls, and big flat boats that displace water, especially when there are sections to keep the balance.

Our new design

This design incorporated both good evaluations to see if it they went well together.

They didn't.

Strength: Deep enough to hold a few marbles.

Strength: Has sections to make the weight spread out and balanced.

Weakness: IT HAS HOLES INSIDE IT EVERYWHERE

Weakness: Sections take a lot of the material, leaving only a little to use.