Week 22

This week my group and I have been working on our cardboard boat. We've started so far by a simple 8 foot box in which we have cut, taped, and shaped into a (hopefully) workable boat. We're trying to make it as big as possible, due to our fear of us just getting into the boat and sinking it if its too small. We have been using the skills we learned from the aluminum foil experiment that we conducted in class to find out how much surface area we needed for our weight. With 8 feet of boat, we have enough surface area. What I learned from the testes we did in class was that a certain amount of surface area carried only a certain amount of weight, so we were better better off with the larger boat than trying to risk making a smaller one. At this point, the boat is still in its less developed stage. It's ready to row, sure, but it has no form of decorations and no form of any hydrodynamic setup, so this week need we are going to have to work on it and really get it to where it is presentable. I believe Daniel and I are going to be the rowers, or it may Mary, but we will see. Something I learned for sure is it was kind of easy to find the water line on the boat. Judging by the surface area and the amount of weight being used on the boat (rowers), I can't imagine it to be too difficult to find out where to put the line of tape to judge the water line. Overall, building this boat has been a fun job and I'm excited for the races!

Week 24

This week, things got very complicated very fast. But no need to fear, Mr. Abud was there. We began learning about Energy, power and work. It was a pretty easy concept to grasp. They all use and need one another to perform their function, but what got me nervous and confused was memerizing and using the formulas to figure out the work and power of certain scenerios given to us. It was very easy for me to confuse the energy formula with the watts formula with the work formula and so on. After out experiment of us running up and down the stairs, it began to make more sense to me, but again, the formulas were still throwing me off. I regrettably didnt go to Mr. Abud for immediate help, as i was struggling with the concepts we learned. Fortunitly though, i managed to get a good nights sleep on Wednesday night and had a good cup of Caribeu Coffee in the morning and on Thursday, i really had a light bulb come on for me. I wont lie, i didnt suddenly become a genius with this stuff, but i think i did much better on the assesment than i would of if i didnt manage to understand the concepts the way i did the day before. The assesment was a little tricky,i was struggling with the last 4 problems due to me mixing up and mistakenly using the wrong formulas for some of the questions, which caused my table to yell at me for taking so long to finish my assesment so they can talk, but atleast i (think) figured it out in the end and hopefully my heavy attention-paying on Thursday paid off. I dont usually get hung up on the concepts in this class, but when it comes to multiple formulas that must be used correctly and with one another, i really was strained. Over all, i found this week very helpful. I learned alot about how energy, power, and work relate and how i can calculate the amount of horse power i have and other objects have during a given time. This information helps alot, and im glad i managed to understand and use it.

Week 23

This week we did the boat races and I must say it was pretty intense. I learned a lot about how the way we structured our boats reflected the way we perform. For instance, our boat was very long and wide so it had no tipping or sinking problems but we weren't as quick as some people with smaller boats but sunk soon after in most cases. I like the way the regada is setup so there isn't anything I would change. For the questions, here's the answers: 1: I believe the sinking of the boats that I saw had to due with weight distribution. As people were entering the boat, they will not equally distribute their weight, causing the already flimsy boat to cave in due to in balanced weights. The second factor for the sinking was surface area of the boat. Typically, the boats that sank had very little surface area so as eight was added, the boat was not able to push of the water to remain of about the water line, causing it to sink in. The third factor was the material. Although we all used cardboard, some people decided to use thinner cardboard with more cuts and pieces than some other boats like our, where we used high strength cardboard to resist the water. 2. All the boats that didn't sink had one thing in common: large surface area. It may not necessarily be "large" surface area, just large enough to support the weight of the rowers to keep them afloat. The physics behind it is that the larger the surface area, the higher of the water you will remain due to more parts of the boat pushing off the water. 3.this would be important to a captain because if all the mass is lower in the boat, it makes the boat more stable, so if the captain were to sit as low as possible as well as his fellow rower during the race, they would much more stable, as opposed to if one of them stood up and caused most of the weight to remain higher off the boat, causing it to be in stable. 4. Our boat was based off of having the most surface area as possible. Our success was being able to keep the boat very stable through out the race, although our failures was the over all size. It was too big to move at a fast speed so although we made 2 laps of successful rowing, we would never come in first place. We also had the success of the best looking boat, which earned us the swag award. 5. Since I was 10 I have been rowing kayaks up north many days of the summer, so I had the technique down pretty early. The best way was to curve the paddle into the water so the he hole bottom portion of the paddle was under water, and then push off with a slight twist. This gave me power and constant high speed through out my kayaking and cardboard boat runs. In physics terminology, the deeper the paddle, the more surface area I can push off of causing more power to be brought against the boat to keep it moving. 6.I would make the boat a little less wide, shorter, and make the front end a little more sturdier and more hydrodynamic. Thats the only issue we had.