Geek Celebrates Hanukkah With Science: Day Two

Hanukkah is the festival of lights, and in my family, we celebrate with illuminating science experiments. Yesterday, we launched a balloon rocket, and today we’re sinking ships. Well, tin foil boats, actually, but this small experiment holds greater drama than you might expect. We thought it would be a simple to float and then sink a couple of flimsy dinghies, but we were surprised but the tiny vessels’ epic buoyancy.

Initially, I’d hoped to introduce the concept of density to my son, but the ‘Floating and Sinking’ experiment provides an excellent gateway to talking about volume, fluid displacement, and the many other contributions of Archimedes, including the origin of “Eureka!” as the go-to exclamation of scientific discovery. As an added bonus, this — like all good experiments — gives the opportunity to practice the scientific method. Of course, sometimes the most fun is had when the experiment doesn’t go as planned…

The instructions for this experiment are simple (materials are in bold):

• Shape a boat from tin foil.
• Drop it in a container of water to see if it floats.
• Crumple the foil boat to see if it sinks.
• If not, shape another foil boat and float it.
• Place objects, like pennies, paper clips or small magnets, in the boat until it sinks.
• Repeat!

Special note: In honor of Archimedes, try this experiment at bath time!