Chip-Ship Challenge

Question: How many pennies can float inside a potato chip (Chip Ship) bag before it would start to sink?

How can objects that are heavy, like pennies, float?

Hypothesis: 50 or more

Yes, pennies can be buoyant.
Picture
Our Experiment

Materials needed:

  • pennies
  • bucket of water
  • small potato chip bag
  • chip lid

Procedure:

  1. Step 1: load a cargo of 50 pennies inside your empty chip bag "boat". Make sure they're evenly distributed.
  2. Step: 2 fill bucket with 5 in. of water. Gently lower the bag of pennies into the water.
What happened to the bag?  It sank didn't it?

 3.  Step 3: Remove the bag and empty it. Repeat step 1 only this   time, place the chip lid flat on top of the pennies so it holds the bag open. Gently lower the bag into the water.

What happened to the bag? It floated!

4.  Step 4: Leaving the bag in the water, add more pennies on top of the lid. See how much cargo you can load into you Chip Ship before it sinks.



Special Needs:
water




The Science behind it:

The chip ship, like all cargo vessels, is designed to carry as much weight as possible. The more water the hull of the ship displaces, the more boyant the vessel. The more boyant the vessel, the more cargo it can carry.
Positioning a lid on top of pennies broadens the hull of the chip ship, which increases the volume inside the vessel and the amount of water displaced outside.

Conclusions:
What keeps a boat from sinking? Boyancy

Boyancy, the upward force that liquids and gases exert on objects.

About Jake

My fave subject is math, I did this for fun. One of my favorite activities is skiing.

About Rory

I like to play video games and I am learning how to snowboard.