The Boat That Wouldn't Sink

My angel still likes Sesame Street and, honestly speaking, do we really ever outgrow it?  On one of the Sesame Street episodes, Murray has the children build a boat from aluminum foil.  A tub is filled water and boat is floated on top.  The children then place large washers in the boat, one washer at a time, to see how many washers the boat will hold before it sinks.  The experiment sounded like so much fun that we decided to try it at home.

We pulled off a 10 inch piece of aluminum foil and filled a tub with water.  Everyone built their boat but... we didn't have any washers.  So, we emptied our piggy banks and decided that quarters would work.  And, so it did.  Until... the boat that wouldn't sink!

We placed all of our quarters in the boat.  We added our dollar coins, then our pennies... this boat WOULD NOT SINK!  Finally, we added every coin that we had and this boat still would not go down. 

So... we took out the coins and sent our Barbie for a ride!

Fun experiment.  We decided that the flat bottoms and the high sides helped our best boats float.  Have you tried this experiment?  How did it work for you?