A tradition that has continued for decades, another year that the physics boat race did not disappoint. On May 9, Upper School students in Physics class had a chance to prove what they have learned in an epic race across our own Silver Lake. The students were put into teams a week before and had to build a boat with only 2 sheets of cardboard and a roll of duct tape. Using the boat and paddles they had made only a few days before, two people from each team had to paddle across the lake. There were a total of 30 boats, but only 13 of those boats could make it across the lake while the rest fell victim to the green depths of the water. The process of building the ship consisted of drawing a design, tracing the cardboard, cutting, taping and decorating your boat. It was important in the process of building your boat to make sure to do everything perfectly or else it could lead to a bigger problem. For example, make sure you make your tape last as long as possible, so that everywhere is completely sealed off.
“My team did not make it across the lake, we only made it about 10 feet away from the flagpole, which is a little past halfway. We should have done the duct tape on the edges a little better to prevent water leaking in our boat,” freshman Mae Holland Spence said.
Freshman Sterling Pollard’s team won first place, but even the first place team said they could also make a few adjustments to their boat.
“I could have designed the boat to have an extra base, to completely ensure that the base wouldn’t bend,” Pollard said.
Not only making sure water did not come into your boat was important, but also ensuring water would not come into your paddles was also important. If the paddles were not completely taped, then water would ruin your entire paddle and it would become useless.
“Our team’s paddles were pretty good, it’s just we should have duct taped the inside of the paddles too so that water could not get inside of them,” Spence said.
In most groups, there were four people, and two people were in the boat while the other two were on the side of the lake.
“I was not in the action part, but I had a great time cheering on my team on the side,” freshman Zaidan Simpson said.
The process of building your boat for the boat race has many steps and can be time-consuming, but students look forward to the end of the school year for this challenge.
“The boat race was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed the whole process,” Pollard said.