St. Martin’s Students Set Sail In Hand-Built Cardboard Boats

Boats made strictly out of cardboard and duct tape seem like a farfetched task, but the math students at St. Martin’s in-the-Field Episcopal made it happen.

Twenty-four students — including 19 seventh-graders, three eighth-graders and two sixth-graders — recently split into five groups and made boats that could seat two students and make one lap in a 25-yard pool without sinking. All five groups succeeded.

“I think it turned out great,” said Teri Kotkiewicz, the seventh- and eighth-grade math teacher who ran the project. “It went a lot better than I expected. The students have been so enthusiastic from the start of the project back in January in making the drawings and the models, up until this.”

The cardboard boat challenge, the first to be held at St. Martin’s, was part of a math lesson to help students understand geometry and displacement. The students started the project by drawing 2-dimensional models on graph paper. They then made 3-dimensional models on Google SketchUp before building the boats. They raced the boats at the Severna Park Community Center on April 24.

The three eighth-graders – Ashley Reiter, Jonathan Mata and Steven Shin, all 14-year-old geometry students – raced an “exhibition” boat, which clocked in at 44 seconds. The top time between the sixth- and seventh-graders was 1:08.

“I think it was a lot of trial and error with making sure everything worked right,” Reiter said. “It was a lot of fun … We made the bottom two pieces of cardboard thick so it wouldn't get as wet and we wouldn't sink. We had to do supports along the sides and seats [to] make it less flimsy and more sturdy.”

The other participating students were Ivy Braddock, Emily Bradshaw, Grace Parker, Sallie McCollum, Ben Stolarczyk, Jack Leverty, Mac Allen, Carly Remmers, Sophie Carney, Andrew Knight, Chloe Cobb, Grayson Phillips, Emilie Antoniak, Daniel McHale-McFarlin, Zack Chafe, Brandon Shin, Alex Von Wie, Jessica Smith, Reyna Felton, Caity Reiter and Duncan Sollars.

SPCC Aquatics made the event possible, providing a pool for students to race their boats. “We try to help the schools out,” aquatics director Maureen Kogut said. “They have different projects that they do that involve water … But this is the first time we've ever seen boats built big enough that the kids could actually get into them and race. So it was pretty cool.”

For more information on events and other opportunities at the pool, find and like “SPCC Aquatics” on Facebook.