Cardboard Ship

During the last few weeks of my time in high school, all of the physics classes designed and raced boats made solely out of cardboard and duct tape. Generally, these classes split up into groups of two people per boat, but since my tiny AP physics class only had eight people, we decided to make one immense ship to challenge the other students’ boats.

My classmates and I worked tirelessly through lunch and outside of school to go through several designs for our boat, make small-scale models, and research the physical concepts required to keep the boat afloat. Eventually, we gathered up a ridiculous amount of cardboard and duct tape and got to work.

Those numerous hours spent working in my friend’s garage required a copious amount of communication between us all to effectively accomplish our design. The time spent communicating and bouncing ideas off of each other before and during the build strengthened my own ability to cooperate with others to overcome a challenge. These hours paid off in the end and our seemingly ridiculous idea to build an eight person cardboard boat ended up allowing us to beat three other teams’ boats and win the competition! This experience definitely strengthened my team-oriented and communication skills that will be crucial to become a successful engineer.