Introduction
My project changed many times. It started from the point that I didn’t even know what a hull was. From that, it evolved into the hardest things I have done in my life. The original question was ‘Does the hull of a boat affect how much water goes into a boat in a storm’, I thought the hull was the deck*. I found out the names of parts of the boat, and decided to make boats out of Styrofoam. This presented us with another problem: We didn’t know any boat builders. From there, we decided to use a model boat. We had obviously never been in the boat world; because we had no clue a model boat could exceed five dollars. With help and encouragement from my father, I looked in the phone book and called around. After a call to a local hobby shop, I was given the number to a boat builder. It was then my father and I found out that most companies only build half of the hull as a model to get an idea of how it will do more than 5 times its size. Back to browsing in the phone book, I stumbled upon Jerry Selness.
Jerry Selness is a naval architect, someone who designs boats. He taught me almost everything I know about boats. However, like climbing a mountain, there is always another ledge to scramble up after a rest. I still didn’t know anyone who actually built model boats. Scratching our heads, my family and I brainstormed. My mother had a tongue twister in mind. Toy Boat. Amazing how the simplest answer evades capture. Because plastic toy boats don’t generally have different hulls, we turned to Boy Scouts. The Cub Scout Raingutter Regatta’s were perfect. Balsa wood (As Mr. Selness recommended) flat bottom boats were sold at the Boy Scout store. My father and I fashioned them into the 4 possible hulls: Deep-V, Round Bottom, Flat Bottom, and the Catamaran. Changing the problem to ‘How does the hull of the boat affect its ability to stay on course’, my new hypothesis was the Deep-V, because the V shaped boat slices through waves.