LOADING GAME

What you need:

• A5 sized pieces of newspaper
• Marbles (or glass nuggets - used in flower arranging)
• Paper clips
• Washing up bowl filled with water

What to do:

• Make a raft from one of the A5 pieces of newspaper by bending up the sides and folding the corners. Secure corners with a paperclip. You decide whether the raft has short sides or deep sides; if it has deep sides it will have a relatively small base, short sides - a larger base.
• Float your raft in the washing up bowl.
• Every player takes it in turns to add one marble (or glass nugget) to the raft, continuing in rotation until the raft sinks!
• The loser is the player whose marble sinks the raft and their forfeit is to build the raft for the next game.
• Note: You will need quite a lot of marbles - rafts built from A5 sized pieces of newspaper can support up to 60 marbles.

Exploring the science:

Contestants will need to 'balance' the load (not put all the marbles in the same corner!) otherwise the raft will capsize and sink fairly quickly. Glass nuggets, with their flat bases, are easier to use as cargo than marbles as they don't roll around. Of course if you use strips of newspaper to compartmentalise the raft (to stop the cargo moving very far), you may be able to increase the final marble load attained! Ships at sea have to be careful to secure their cargo to stop it moving around otherwise they are vulnerable to capsize, especially in rough seas.

Try comparing the loads achieved by rafts with short sides and large bases as against rafts with tall sides and smaller bases. How many marbles a raft will carry depends both on its volume (length x width x height) and its stability. Rafts with tall sides are not very stable

Remember:

• Remove the paper clips and recycle your damp newspaper!