NEWPORT BEACH : Physics Students Pool Ideas

With hundreds of excited students looking on Tuesday afternoon, senior Mark Gaon lowered himself gingerly into a flimsy cardboard boat at the fourth annual Corona del Mar High School Physics Boat Race.

The boat, designed by Gaon and fellow seniors Jeff Bellitti, David Barisic and Colin Delaney, took on all challengers and won the competition by seven seconds. About half of the boats in the contest sank, to the delight of the many students who had been excused from class to see the 24 boats compete in five heats in the school’s swimming pool.

At stake were extra credit points for each of the 71 students who made up the event’s 24 entries.

Each team of students had been given three eight-foot sheets of cardboard, a roll of tape, a knife, and a plastic canoe paddle. The object, according to physics teacher and event organizer Jackie Vorona, was to build a sturdy vessel that could hold a student through the 200-meter race without disintegrating and sinking.

Teams were then given an hour to build a boat from plans they had drafted as a part of their physics class.

The most popular boat design had a conelike nose, high sides, and a reinforced bottom.

The winning boat had a flat bottom, a V-shaped nose and foot-high sides. It had won its first 200-meter race without suffering much water damage and qualified for the final race of the afternoon against five others.

When Vorona signaled the start of the championship race, Gaon’s crew pushed him away from the edge of the pool. Two of the other boats in the race were eliminated after they began to sink faster than the crew member could bail water.

But Gaon paddled 100 meters to the end of the pool and came back a winner. He crossed the finish line in 1 minute 35 seconds, seven seconds faster than the next boat.

“I didn’t think I would make it,” Gaon said after the race. “The sides were folding in on me.”

Gaon said that winning “feels great” partly because his team designed a winning vessel and because he may have accumulated enough extra credit to ensure an A in physics.

The winning boat will be dried out and preserved in Vorona’s classroom for future physics students to use in designing boats for next year’s event.