Dont rock the boat-experiment

Spring Experiment"Don't Rock the Boat"Science/Ms. Fowler

How Does the Length of the Bilge Keel Affect the Boat's Stability?

Experimental Question

Materials

What happened and Why? The data that I collected showed that my hypothesis was correct. The longer the bilge keel length, the less oscillations the boat makes, and the shorter amount of time it takes to stop oscillating. In my reading and research I learned that bilge keels actually create resistance that stops the water from rocking and rolling the boat. The bilge keels create stability. The one point of data that deviates from the pattern found in the data is the total time in seconds it takes for the boat to stop oscillating for the 4cm bilge keel length. The 4 cm bilge keel length took less time to stop oscillating than the 5 cm bilge keel length. I think that this occured because of human error such as not controlling the stopwatch with absolute precision. However the data overwhelmingly shows that the longer the bilge keel length, the less time and less oscillations it takes for the boat to stabilize in the water.

Data

Results

If the length of the bilge keel is increased then the number of oscillations made by the boat will decrease because the boat will be more stable.

Hypothesis

Bottle Boat with Bilge

1.5 liter bottles (2)razor blademetric rulergorilla glue50 marblespermanent markerbathtub with waterwooden dowel (30 cm)stopwatchfoam-padded double-sided adhesive tapescissorshelper*Explain how the dowel starts the motion. ...........................................................................................................................................

Boat with Bilge Keel

Materials & Procedure

Credits