Construction

We were supposed to work in groups of 5 to make a small boat using a maximum of 9 Volts of battery and absolutely any material/design of our own choosing. We were not allowed to control the boat once it left the starting point. So, me and my friends planned to build a fan boat out of styrofoam that would be run by a small motor and a battery. We used a 9V Duracell battery, a RadioShack Super Speed 9-18VDC Hobby Motor, a fan cut out of a small toy and a whole lot of tape. Our whole idea was to use a big fan to propel a lightweight boat. This idea of ours backfired on us, but I'll discuss that in the conclusion. We used a small saw to design our whole boat and most of it was done right beside the Roth Pond so that we could build and test at the same time.

Design

So, we had an idea, we knew what materials we needed, the only thing left to figure out was the design. All of us brainstormed and contirbuted to a single proposed design. We wanted to mount the fan at the back, place the battery in the middle so as to shift the center of gravity to the center of the boat so that it can go in a staright path. We had the basic idea, but we fiddled with it till the very last day so as to get the best design possible.  The final design that we came up with was actually pretty good, at least that's what we thought. We mounted the fan on the back as planned, the main battery in the middle and we also taped our backup batteries in the middle, they weren't powering the motor, but we placed them just to get a better center of gravity. Now that were the basics, but our main problem was to make the boat go in a straight path at a high speed without toppling. Thus, we cut out a streamlined section in the middle of the boat so that the boat would go straight and without much resistance. Also, we shaped the front in such a fashion so as to minimize the drag force.