Cardboard Boat Race

The Institute of Mechanical Engineers annual cardboard boat race and the IET funded workshops “all about boats”
Here we teach pupils to become engineers! We provide a thoroughly hands on (wet) STEM session to cover the topics of materials, buoyancy, Archimedes principle, boat design, scale drawing, scale models, testing, refined planning and boat building.

The Institute of Mechanical Engineers Cardboard boat race

“Awesome” Reu
“That was epic” Benji

“Overall really enjoyed the session. Had lots of fun working in a team and making our own boat. Also learnt about the life of an engineer.” Stoke Dameral Community College, Year 10 pupil.

Words to describe the session by the pupils were: Inspiring, educational, interesting, fun, educating, team, great, experience, inspirational, peng, good, entertaining, fun, creative, tricky, teamwork, fun and educational.  (“Peng” we believe is the new term for “cool”!) 

The year 10 students reported that the ession taught them: Buoyancy, air space, mass, displacement, measurement, water, moon, cardboard, HE, STEM, cardboard, buoyant, steerage and Scrombus (The Latin name printed on the label of the fish I used to show hydrodynamics!).