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.