High Life : A WEEKLY FORUM FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS : It’s Sink or Swim at Annual Boat-Building Contest

Row, row, row your boat gently--and I mean gently --across the pool.

With only 125 feet of 1/4-inch pine wood, 36 square feet of butcher paper, varnish and some wood glue to hold the entire thing together, physics students from Sunny Hills High School were assigned the task of constructing boats that could carry a person across the school’s swimming pool.

“It’s a lot of fun, and it puts the concepts of physics to a practical use,” Assistant Principal Steve Roderick said of the 10-year-old event--an idea that originated at Canyon High School in Anaheim. “It’s real scary, though, when they are still making them out here on the deck.”

Though they knew about their assignment since the start of the semester, some students still sat hunched over and busily working on their creations right up until the last minute.

“I built mine by myself, without a partner,” boasted junior Cindy Song, whose vessel soon met with disaster when a fellow student accidentally put his foot through the front of her boat. Song patched the hole with duct tape--which was allowed in case of emergencies on the day of departure--and her boat later passed.

All the boats, however, were not as successful. As skippers lowered themselves onto the crafts from the diving board, many of the boats sank under the weight. Junior boat-builders Helen Kim and Peter Kim got halfway across the pool in their two-man boat before Peter fell overboard; Helen continued safely to the other side.

The students earned 15 points for simply building the boat, 25 points if it survived the trip, plus points for the ratio of the weight of the pilot to the time it took to travel the distance. Participants received five extra points if they could persuade one of their teachers to pilot their boat, and 10 points for an administrator on board.

The designs ranged from paper boxes to kayaks to rowboats. The most noteworthy, according to physics teacher Marcia Dixon, were “the narrow ones which crossed very quickly, or the ones with a keel that were very stable, and those with prows, which seemed to skim the water.”

Two narrow boats each achieved times of 14 seconds, and the paddler of both was math teacher Ron Kasser, who has been aboard the winning boat for the past three years of the event.

“I try to sit more in the back of the boats and lean over my knees and reach down so I can dig into the water more,” Kasser said of his style. “But it is the boat more than me. The more there is in front, the faster it will go because it can cut through the water. I’m just driving it.”

Two of the students whose boat achieved the 14-second mark were the team of junior Nick Gomez and senior Dena Amr. Gomez attributed their success to “the design, because it was built like an arrow.”

Other teams were less confident of their boats’ abilities. Said senior Joe Schlitz, “We’re worried because we have never done anything like this before.”

English teacher Roy Bogseth, who also piloted a boat, was pretty matter-of-fact about the the competition. “Most of the designs are pretty good,” he said, “and if you sink, well, you sink.”

Said Roderick: “The kids built some sturdy boats. So far, I haven’t sunk, even if the wood breaks or cracks . . . just don’t let the water get in.”

Well, more water did get in the boats this year. Last year, 77% of the vessels made it across the pool, but this year, only 70% (49 of 70) were successful.

But the most successful boat of all was the one designed by juniors Nandita Sapre and Eun Lee. The first-place winner made the crossing in 24 seconds and carried Sapre and social science teacher Patrick Lampman for a total cargo of 298 pounds. It edged the second-place boat by .05 points.

The goal of the assignment, according to Dixon, was to prove Archimedes’ Principle: A floating object will displace a volume of water equal to the weight of the floating object.

To which Dixon added her own principle: “In order to get out of high school, you have to be able to float a boat.”