MARIENVILLE, Pa. (EYT) – Mr. Roth’s fourth-grade science class learned about density and buoyancy by building boats out of aluminum foil.
(Pictured from left to right: Nick Geraci, Jonah Glass, Will Heferle, Aidan Spuck-Campbell, Kailey Gregory, Alivia Howard, Jalynn Weiss, and Jayden Colvin.)
The students first studied the concept of density and learned that aluminum is denser than water and should sink. Their task was to build a watercraft out of a single sheet of aluminum foil that would float. Through trial and error, the students learned that when they added more air to their aluminum boat the buoyancy changed and it was capable of floating.
Then, they competed against each other by seeing who could build the boat that could hold the most weight. They calculated the mass of one marble (four grams) and added as many marbles as possible to their boats until they sunk. They then multiplied the number of marbles in their boat by four to find the total mass of the marbles.
They had multiple boats that held over 250 marbles (1,000 grams) before they were no longer able to float. That’s well over two pounds of marbles!
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