What we used:
Copper tubing, votive and birthday candles, a lighter and matches, foam insulation and foil bread and pie pans
How Elijah built his boat:
First my dad coiled the copper tubing for us. Then I got a piece of foam and then I drilled holes for my tubing and dug another hole for my candle to sit in which I covered in foil to protect the foam from burning or melting. Then I used a pie pan and bent it to fit and cut a hole in the top for a smoke vent and to let oxygen in. I used a birthday candle so I could get a bigger flame. It worked great and moved very fast in the water. I named it the Turbo Turtle.
How Hannah built her boat:
My boat was more boat shaped. I used a tin bread pan and bent the back of the pan inward to set my copper tubing on. I hot glued it in place. Then I used metal tape to set the candle on so sit wouldn’t slip. For decoration I used cut pieces of a pie pan to make a top section and a flag for the back.
How Eliana built her boat:
My mom helped me drill holes in the back on the bread pan and we put the coil through those and used lots of hot glue to try to seal it. We used a little piece of foam to hold it up. Then we put the candle in the middle. Mine worked for a little while but then got leaks so I just decorated mine the way I wanted and used it to play with.
What we learned and how it worked:
We filled the copper tubing with water and put it in the pool and lit the candle and waited a short while and then watched it shake and then start cruising. The water in the tubing boils causing steam that pushes out the back and then causes a vacuum to suck more water back in and start the cycle over again. These worked really good and it was fun to be creative with it.
Click on an image to enlarge:
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Fun in a practical way.
Great job! Although it is not exactly a true steam engine (you would need a boiler and some sort of reciprocating piston-and-cylinder setup) you have done a great job of illustrating steam power in it’s most basic form. Who knows… maybe our advanced technology will fail someday, and we will need people who understand the principles of steam power.
It’s fun to see that you all used your own creative ideas and gifts for your putt putt.
Quite a complicated project. Wow – you kids all did such a great job!
Now I hope at least one of you becomes an engineer. You have a good head start. Engineers build REAL things.
So which one of you is it – who’s going to become an engineer?
10 star rating!
These are amazing. It makes me want to build my own!!! There are so many things we could do with these boats! Way to go! Great Job!
Awesome! And now you understand how the industrial revolution got kicked off and mass transportation got started. We had steam powered ships and trains before there was electricity, I believe.
Great project and teamwork, this looks like fun!
How ingenious – several approaches!
These took a lot of patience but you stuck with it. It was fun to watch them putt along.
Great job.
Such a neat idea .I have not heard of this before .Wonder how far they can go Mary Moore