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Boat Building Investigation

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Boat Building Investigation

A harbour team needs a small boat to carry as many identical counters as possible without sinking. Plan a fair test, build and test your design, then use your results to improve it. Work with a shallow tub of water and follow your teacher’s safety directions. Dry the work area after testing.

Plan a fair investigation

Use the same foil amount and the same type of counter for each test. Change only the boat shape. Add counters one at a time, placing each gently in the middle. Stop when water comes over the edge or the boat sinks.

1.Which question will your investigation answer? Choose the best one for this test.

Which boat shape carries the most identical counters?
Which counter is the heaviest?
Which tub holds the most water?

2.Write your prediction. Which shape do you think will carry the most counters, and why?

3.Name one thing you will keep the same in every test, and one thing you will change.

Draw your planned boat. Label its shape and show where you will place the counters.

Test and record

Build and test three boats using equal-sized pieces of foil. Record the number of counters each boat carries before it sinks or takes on water. Use your own results in the next two questions.

Boat shape

Counters carried

What happened at the end?

Boat 1

Boat 2

Boat 3

4.Which of your boats carried the most counters? Give the shape and your recorded number.

5.What happened to your boat when it reached its limit? Describe what you observed, not what you expected.

6.A group tested three shapes and recorded: wide, shallow = 18 counters; deep bowl = 14 counters; long, narrow = 9 counters. Which shape held the most, and how many more counters did it hold than the long, narrow shape?

Explain and improve

Think about what your tests showed. A floating boat pushes water aside; the water pushes upwards on the boat. This upward force is called buoyancy. Adding cargo increases the boat’s weight, so it sits lower in the water.

7.True or false: If you add more counters, a floating boat usually sits lower in the water.

TrueFalse

8.In your own words, explain how buoyancy helps a boat float. Include what the water does.

9.The wide boat carried more than the narrow boat in the example. Suggest one reason its shape might help it carry more cargo.

10.Suggest one change to your best boat design. How would you test whether the change improves it while keeping the test fair?

3 printable pages

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More Science Worksheets

Year 5

Boat Building Investigation

Boat Building Investigation

Plan a fair investigation

Test and record

Explain and improve

3 printable pages

About This Worksheet

Free in Kuraplan

Print-Ready

AI-Generated

For Teachers & Parents

Need a custom version of this worksheet?

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