Plastic Bottle Boats

July 8 - 12, 2019

Week-long boat building experiment with recycled plastic bottles, duct tape, pool noodles and chicken wire.

Session 1

July 8, 2019

To kick-off the project we sent one of our teachers, Jason, through the pool noodle tunnel.

Before starting on our large-scale projects, the group was tasked with making model boats using limited supplies: two bottles, one piece of scrap wood and duct tape. They tested their models for balance by placing them in buckets of water and stacking 1”x1” wood blocks on top. They discovered how placing bottles in different positions changed how the model functioned.

Quin and Alden set the record with a load of over 100 blocks.

Next steps involved drawing and planning our large-scale projects. The group worked on drawing ideas and sharing them with the class. Seven projects where introduced including a turtle shaped boat and and hamster+banana-shaped catamaran.

After the toss we sorted and organized the bottles into piles by size and shape. After a “3,2,…1” countdown the kids were set loose to collect what they needed. The scene was like Walmart on Black Friday.