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Lesson Plan 9
Ballast.
SCIENCE
Audience: This experiment should be able to be adapted to any grade level, Though I am writing it for elementary school students.
Goal: The students will demonstrate the importance of ballast to the design of a sailing vessel. The students will also compare and contrast the properties of differing "hull" and ballast materials.
Materials: Bucket or large pot, water, paper cups, plastic cups, styrene cups, glass cups, sand, lead weights, broken crayons.
Procedures: Introduce and explain the concept of ballast. Have students create a recording sheet to record experiment results. Then have the students put different cups in the water and observe them fall over and possibly sink. Then allow them to experiment with differing types and amounts of ballast to achieve optimum buoyancy and stability. Have students pour some sand or lead weights into the bottoms of different types of cups and test them to see how they float. Stability can be tested by blowing on the cups when they are floating in the water. Be creative and use other, lighter materials, such as broken crayons to demonstrate that much more room and material is used to achieve similar results.
Evaluation: Assist the students in filling out their results and discuss the differing results with them.
Lesson plan by Greg Handal.