Anchors aweigh!
Danette Goulet
NEWPORT BEACH -- It was sink or win for physics students at Corona del
Mar High School on Tuesday when they built cardboard boats and climbed
aboard for the race of their lives.
Teams of three students were given three 4-by-8 pieces of cardboard, two
rolls of packing tape, a knife and one hour to assemble a boat.
Amid laughter, squabbling and frantic cutting and taping, students
managed to create 27 boat-like contraptions.
The first rule of the race, as determined by physics teacher Jackie
Vorona, is that the object made by students must be a boat.
A boat is defined in the rules as a craft that will displace water and
not accelerate downward.
By that definition, some were boats and some were not.
After the hour had expired, students gingerly placed their creations at
the edge of the school’s swimming pool and waited for the signal to climb
aboard. At the signal, they began the frantic journey to the other side
and back.
Each year, Vorona said, about 70% of the boats make the round trip
successfully. The builders of the boats that sink would be fortunate to
already have a good grade in the class, since the assignment is worth 50
points.
It is also one class project guaranteed to garner great attendance.
“I came all three years,” Ryan Jetton said as he taped and cut. “It’s
kind of scary knowing you’re going to sink.”
Unfortunately, Ryan’s premonition -- or lack of faith in his
boat-building abilities -- proved correct. When he and his teammate, Greg
Stampling, climbed aboard their vessel, the “Pooh Canoe,” it promptly
sank.
Others, perhaps, should have had more confidence.
Katy Lewis paddled one of the two boats that tied for first place in the
first of four heats, but didn’t think she would make it.
“Actually, at first I thought it was going to sink -- but it didn’t,” she
said.
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