Personal Narrative: How To Build Three Boats

When I was in tenth grade, in my marine sciences class we had a group project, in which we had to build three boats. It was the first project of the year, and it was a big part all of our grades. The boats could only be twelve centimeters by twelve centimeters at the most and could only be comprised of the materials provided in the class, tinfoil, two popsicle sticks, straws, tape, paper, etc. Each boat had to serve a different purpose, sail straight, hold thirty dice, or survive waves, and the group that built the boat that served its purpose the best received extra credit. My group consisted of Shane, Kyle, Isaac, and I. We all agreed on how to build the boat that needed to survive waves, and it worked perfectly, but once we started to brainstorm …show more content…
After the boat was built we tested it, but the raft, made of straws, always submerged a little and then flew out from the bottom, like a pool inflatable held underwater. After they realized that Isaac’s plan wasn’t going to work, we started to discuss what to try next, so I brought up my idea again, but Isaac said it was too simple and wasn’t going to work. Even though he didn’t like my idea no one else had a better idea, so we tried it anyways. All we had to do was shape tin foil into a bowl like structure, and make sure it didn’t have any openings to let water in. We put a second layer of tin foil over it, Isaac’s idea, to try to make sure it didn’t let on water. When we tested it, it tipped over on its own because it was too top heavy, but it needed to be tall, so that it wouldn’t go underwater when we added the dice in, causing part of the boat to submerge. The boat being too top heavy turned out not to be an issue because the dice helped lower the center of gravity of the boat when we tested with them in it, preventing it from tipping