Staff Reports
FORTVILLE — How many schools give their students a challenge to defy gravity and walk on water? At Mt. Vernon Middle School, the 8th grade teachers challenges their students’ critical thinking skills by tasking them to build a piloted device that travels the length of the pool.
In teams of three or four, students use any materials they can obtain for one team member to navigate the float across the pool. Teams do not have an opportunity to test their floats prior to the competition, and if it sinks, the team is out of the competition.
The project is designed to test the students’ knowledge on issues of problem solving, the scientific method, planning a long-term project, teamwork and writing a formal lab report. Students are encouraged to think outside of the box and consider the scientific concepts of propulsion, density, energy, energy transfer, Newton’s Laws and stability. The project also requires the student to work through the engineering design process. This year, students even made prototypes of their float design.
Many teams get in the spirit and dress in a theme that represents their group. This year, teams were dressed as baseball players, video game characters and in Hawaiian shirts.
The Walk-on-Water project is a curriculum-based event and one of the capstone activities at Mt. Vernon Middle School.
