As you can see, the Maker has been at it again. This time he put together a water-powered boat made from paper plates, a cup, a straw, some blue painter’s tape, and a wad of gum (which he borrowed from one of his brothers).
When I saw the working demonstration, this craft had already been tested on our rain-swollen creek and found float-worthy. You pour water in the cup, and as the water pours out through the straw, it pushes the boat forward, nifty as you please.
I don’t know where he comes up with this stuff. I just try to keep him in supplies.
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You should really submit these inventions to Make magazine (http://www.makezine.com). Yeah, some of the things are made by MIT engineers, but the brilliant but simple-to-build projects are always the biggest hits.
Great creation. I’m going to make my own this week.
Cool idea, Dave.
And I can’t wait to tell my son that you’re gonna build a paper plate boat, too. He’ll be proud.
Reminds me of the days when we used to play in “the stream” – a seasonal drainage flow.. not even a ditch (hence the term “stream”), that trickled through the wooded right of way just behind our house. We used to make boats out of 1/2 gallon paper milk cartons (cut in half length-wise), or from the flat tops of styrofoam egg cartons (just rubber cement some saran wrap over the two holes in the lid) and with the addition of a soda straw and make shift sail and you had a rockin boat. Of course, in typical “boy tradition,” most of ours ended up getting shot to pieces by bb guns, or set ablaze by dripping milk jug bombs – light plastic milk jugs with cigarette lighters and you get some really neat “drippy flamey napalmy-like” drops of melted platsic that are guaranteed to leave scars…
thank you thank you thank you!!!!! i had a school project that had to be a water powered machine or something and could NOT find something to do. but you’ve just made it so easy!! thanks heaps!!!!!!!!
Glad it was helpful to you, Hannah!