floating and sinking boat experiment

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar
• MEMBER LOGIN

Hands On As We Grow®

Hands on kids activities for hands on moms. Focusing on kids activities perfect for toddlers and preschoolers.

How to Make a Tin Foil Boat Sink or Float Experiment (Penny Boat Challenge)

4th of July Math & 123s Grade School Kindergartners Preschoolers 8 Comments

Work on counting money then dip into science with a tin foil boat float or sink experiment, also known as the Penny Boat Challenge.

President’s Day and other Patriotic Holidays are a great time to talk about US history. Making history real for kids is kind of hard though.

But money is very, very real – and many US presidents are on our coins!

I was inspired by Washington Crossing the Delaware , the famous Emanuel Leutze painting, while dreaming up this activity. For this tin foil boat sink or float experiment, it’s all about the water.

Need your toddler to learn a number? Try this free week of activities.

Easy Tin Foil Boat Money Float or Sink Experiment

To get prepped for this tin foil boat experiment, you’ll need:

• aluminum foil
• tub, big container, pot or sink

We searched through our coin jars to find four presidents: Abraham Lincoln (pennies), Thomas Jefferson (nickels), Franklin D. Roosevelt (dimes), and George Washington (quarters).

We sorted the coins into piles while looking at the faces, talking about each president the whole time.

I did a rubbing  of a penny, nickel, dime, and quarter to show the presidents’ faces along with their names. I had to do a second rubbing of a nickel when we noticed there are two different pictures for Thomas Jefferson.

Even children as young as three (with adult supervision) can  practice sorting and matching  the coins!

Add a Little History to Your Science Experiment

As we sorted and did coin rubbings, we also chatted about history.

If you’d like to share some fast facts, talk about these:

• George Washington: on the quarter, 1st president and helped win the Revolutionary War
• Thomas Jefferson: on the nickel, 3rd president and wrote the Declaration of Independence
• Abraham Lincoln: on the penny, 16th president and was president during the Civil War
• Franklin D. Roosevelt: on the dime, 32nd president and the only president elected 4 times

While we talked and learned, my daughter decided to make her own “coins” by pressing aluminum foil around a couple of coins. She had seen the aluminum foil I had out for the next step and wanted to experiment.

Her coin copies turned out so much better than my coin rubbings!

Float or Sink? Tin Foil Boat Experiments for the Penny Boat Challenge

After all of our talk about history and investigating the coins themselves, it was time to get down to experimenting. Up first: building tin foil boats, or a raft, for our float and sink experiment.

This is the reason the aluminum foil had been sitting out to begin with.

I used a plastic bowl as a mold so that all of the boats would be about the same size so that the weight of the foil would be roughly the same for each boat. Tear or cut a piece of aluminum foil slightly larger than the bowl.

Next, wrap the tin foil all the way around the bowl, tucking it in over the edge. Press down fairly firmly to really mold the foil to the bowl’s shape.

Then, I gently unwrapped the bowl just enough to remove it from the aluminum foil.

Finally, fold edges that had been in the bowl back in again so that the walls of the boat is really strong. Repeat four times to make four similar-sized tin foil boats.

Your kids could get crafty and make a boat design of their own with the foil once the foil is cut to size.

Will the Tin Foil Boat Float or Sink?

My goal was to fill one with President Abraham Lincoln (pennies), one with President Thomas Jefferson (nickels), one with President Franklin D. Roosevelt (dimes), and one with President George Washington (quarters).

I thought it would be a fun science experiment to see what floats.

Our Challenge: Which presidential coin will we get more of in each boat before it sinks?

My plan changed when I realized we didn’t have enough quarters and dimes to actually sink the boats.

Here’s my original plan for the penny boat challenge:

• Count pennies into one tin foil boat, making tallies until the boat sank
• Repeat with nickels, dime, and quarters into the other tin foil boats
• Compare the different tally marks to see which boat needed to least coins to sink and the most coins to sink
• Talk about other things we observed
• Repeat with combos of coins or just float boats + coins around the water

All the Presidents Money Counting Tin Foil Boat Game for Kids

Okay, so my first idea didn’t quite pan out. I’m already on the hunt for more coins so we can actually do the tin foil boat float or sink experiment.

However, my activity plan didn’t totally fail since we were able to turn it into a cool money counting game !

First, we talked about how much each coin was worth:

• Penny = $0.01 or 1 cent
• Nickel = $0.05 or 5 cents
• Dime = $0.10 or 10 cents
• Quarter = $0.25 or 25 cents

Then, we talked about how to count to 100 with each coin and made a chart:

• Pennies: 100
• Nickels: 20
• Quarters: 4

We counted out $1 worth of each of the coins. One hundred pennies and twenty nickels were easier to count when stacked in piles of ten.

Counting coins is great skip counting practice !

Slightly older kids might not need assistance counting, but be sure to lend a hand or have pre-portioned coins for the little ones.

With our kitchen sink filled with water, we put $1 worth of coins into each of the boats. They all floated!

President Abraham Lincoln’s boat and President Thomas Jefferson’s boat did get a little bit of water in them, though. It was fun to talk about why that might be with my kids and maybe it was out boat building skills.

Fun Twists to the Tin Foil Boat Money Float

My daughters didn’t want to stop there. They decided they each wanted to create their own tin foil boats in different shapes.

One created her own round boat. She used the plastic bowl upside down as a mold.

My other daughter decided to create a long rectangular boat, freestyle.

They were both happy when their boats actually floated on the water. We did need to make some adjustments before everything was perfect, but it’s all part of the process.

They decided to put pennies into each of the boats one by one as we counted. It became a competition to see which boat could hold more of President Abraham Lincoln.

We make a prediction or two and asked questions prior to starting their penny boat challenge:

• How many pennies do you think you can get in your boat before it sinks?
• What happens if you stack all the pennies in one spot?
• Is it better if you spread the pennies across the bottom of the boat?
• Should we throw the pennies on the boat?
• Would it be better if we set the pennies gently on the boat?

We counted 169 pennies into each boat before we ran out of pennies. But neither boat sank.

So, we decided to just use one boat to see how many pennies it would take before it sank. The round boat ended up sinking with 267 pennies in it.

We switched and filled the rectangle tin foil boat, which ended up sinking with 185 pennies in it.

My daughters ended up experimenting for quite a while with the aluminum foil and water. They saw that their empty aluminum foil boats floated, but other objects sank.

We love this fun fireworks-theme science experiment , too!

Thankfully, George Washington’s boat was sturdier than our tin foil boat!

Ideas to keep the learning going:

Do you think the shape of your boat will affect how much cargo it can hold? Test and find out!

Or instead of how many pennies, maybe test to see the maximum number of coins?

Or what is the maximum dollar amount you can get it to hold.

How do you blend different types of learning, like history and science? We’d love to check out your creative ideas!

About Brigitte Brulz

Brigitte Brulz is a homeschooling mom of two daughters, wife of her high school sweetheart, and author of Jobs of a Preschooler and Pickles, Pickles, I Like Pickles. She offers free coloring pages and activity ideas on her website at BrigitteBrulz.com .

More Hands on Kids Activities to Try

Reader Interactions

February 3, 2020 at 4:57 am

This is awesome! I’ve always used February to introduce the concept of money to my preschoolers, a natural fit, right? But your ideas are going to make it so much more fun this year! Thank you❣ Happy February ????

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

What Parents Have to Say…

Shop ebooks of activities.

Get activity plans delivered to your inbox, every week!

Activities that hands-on parents absolutely love.

How to Make a Lava Lamp Experiment Without Alka Seltzer

Gross Motor Activities for Preschoolers: The Top 35!

25 Sensory Activities for Kids with Sensory Tubs & Further Exploration

Top Physical Activities for Toddlers! Mom, Embrace the Energy!

Make a Color Sorting Sensory Bag with Your Kids: Super Easy & Squishy

50+ simple activities for toddlers, get started having fun with your kids.

PLAN THE FUN WITH THE FREE KIDS ACTIVITIES PLANNER! AND RECEIVE ACTIVITIES EVERY WEEK!

• Preschoolers
• Kindergartners
• Grade School
• Literacy & ABCs
• Math & 123s
• Art Projects
• Gross Motor
• Shop Activity Plans
• Member Login

• arts & crafts
• _famous artists
• _process art
• _paint recipes
• _keepsake crafts
• _book activities
• _sensory bins
• _sensory play recipes
• _science experiments
• _free printables
• _colouring pages
• _valentines day
• _st patrick's day
• _mother's day
• _father's day
• _thanksgiving

Floating Foil Boat Experiment

You will need:

• tin foil 
• glass gems (alternatively you could use pennies or compare bears) 
• water tray 

Foil Boat Experiment

• — Share It —

No comments

Hello & Welcome!

Follow By Email

Join the fun subscribe to our newsletter to have fun ideas delivered to your inbox subscribe.

Get FREE craft and activity ideas

Join our newsletter to have ideas delivered to your inbox each week!

There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

Copyright Messy Little Monster . Blog design by Designs by Kassie . Privacy Policy Here

Buggy and Buddy

Meaningful Activities for Learning & Creating

July 20, 2013 By Chelsey

Science for Kids: Sink or Float (with Free Printable)

Kids love discovering which items will sink or float ! It’s a great hands-on science activity for kids of any age and really gets kids thinking and predicting. Here’s how we set up our sink or float science project, as well as a free printable kids can use to record their observations.

Follow our Science for Kids Pinterest board!

This experiment was actually initiated by Lucy herself! She had approached me one day and asked if I could help get her a container of water to test out some objects she had collected.

Kids are naturally curious about floating and sinking, and this science activity provides the opportunity for children to make predictions and observations about floating and sinking with minimal help.   (This post contains affiliate links.)

Materials for Sink or Float Science:

• Large container filled with water
• Objects collected from around the house
• Free printable recording sheet  (optional)

• Walk around your house with your child and collect items you’d like to test out. (We collected these things: bristle block ,  plastic toy, crayon, cork, a spoon, and a rock.)
• Fill a large container with water. (We used a large plastic bin.)
• Find a place to conduct the science experiment where your child can easily reach the bin and where you don’t mind a bit of water possibly getting out.
• Have your child choose one object at a time.  Do you think it will sink or float? Why?   Have your child place the object in the water and observe what happens. (Optional: Record the result on the recording sheet. You can have your child draw a picture or write the name of the object or model writing and drawing the object yourself.)
• Repeat this for all the objects.
• Why do you think some objects floated and some sank? Is there anything the same about the objects that floated? How about with the objects that sank? 

Lucy had so much fun with this! It was fun to sit back and watch her excitement and curiosity grow as the activity went on. At one point she even came up with a new question, “I wonder what will happen if I push the floating things down to the bottom. Maybe they will stay there.” She discovered they still floated right back up!

• We took our experiment outside. That way there was no worry about a mess being made.
• I left this outside for a few days for the kids to experiment with on their own during play time.
• This would also be a fun center in a school classroom!

Want to go even further?

Even more activities to inspire creativity and critical thinking for various ages.

• Fill up a giant backyard pool with water and do this experiment with larger items.
• For older kids, introduce the terms density and buoyancy to explain what happened.
• Place an orange in your container of water to see if it floats. Peel the orange and try it again. What happened?
• Try the Floating Egg experiment found on Tinkerlab.
• Do our Dancing Raisin science experiment.

Find more STEM activities in our ebook! Learn more about it here , or b uy it now here !

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar

• FREE Experiments
• Kitchen Science
• Climate Change
• Egg Experiments
• Fairy Tale Science
• Edible Science
• Human Health
• Inspirational Women
• Forces and Motion
• Science Fair Projects
• STEM Challenges
• Science Sparks Books
• Contact Science Sparks
• Science Resources for Home and School

Fruity Boats – sinking and floating experiment

June 3, 2014 By Emma Vanstone 3 Comments

Objects float when they are less dense than the fluid they are in. If you dropped a tennis ball and a marble into a bucket of water, the marble would sink, and the tennis ball would float. This is because a tennis ball is full of air ( it is not very dense ), and a marble is solid ( it is very dense ). Huge ships float because although they are extremely heavy, they have a lot of empty space inside. Lemons float as they have lots of air pockets in their thick skin. The inside of a lemon actually sinks !

What do you think of our fruity lemon boats?

What you need to make a fruity boat

• Lemons, limes, melon or anything else with thick skin.
• Small sticks – we used cake pop sticks
• Paper to make sails
• Double-sided tape – for the sails.

How to make a fruity boat

• First, hollow out the fruit; I managed to cut the lemon and lime so we could eat the fruit and still use them for the activity.
• Decide how to cut the fruit to make the best shaped boat.
• If the skin is thick enough, push the stick into the flesh. If not, use a bit of play-doh to keep it secure.
• Add your sail and see if the boat floats.

( ask an adult to help with the cutting )

We found our thin melon rind didn’t float at all, but the larger rind did float. Both lemon and lime boats floated easily.

Fruity Boat – Extension Activity

Try adding more objects to the boats. Do they still float or now sink?

Can you predict which boats will sink and which float before putting them on the water? Make a table to show your results.

What happens if you blow the boats? Can you have a race with a friend?

How can you make the boat change direction?

Can you make a boat from apple slices?

Suitable for Key Stage 1

Everyday Materials

Describe the simple physical properties of a variety of everyday materials

Working Scientifically

Observing closely, using simple equipment

Performing simple tests

Using their observations and ideas to suggest answers to questions

Suitable for Early Learning Goal 16

Exploring and using media and materials

Safely use and explore a variety of materials, tools and techniques, experimenting with colour, design, texture, form and function.

Don’t forget to try my other science ideas for Key Stage 1 too!

Last Updated on January 10, 2023 by Emma Vanstone

Safety Notice

Science Sparks ( Wild Sparks Enterprises Ltd ) are not liable for the actions of activity of any person who uses the information in this resource or in any of the suggested further resources. Science Sparks assume no liability with regard to injuries or damage to property that may occur as a result of using the information and carrying out the practical activities contained in this resource or in any of the suggested further resources.

These activities are designed to be carried out by children working with a parent, guardian or other appropriate adult. The adult involved is fully responsible for ensuring that the activities are carried out safely.

Reader Interactions

June 07, 2014 at 1:39 am

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

NOTIFICATIONS

Floating and sinking – exploring forces.

• + Create new collection

An object floats when the weight force (gravity) on the object is balanced by the support force (upwards push or upthrust) of the water on the object.

A plastic toy duck floats in water because the pull of gravity is less than the support force. If we push the toy down into the water, this additional force upsets the balance – making the downwards force greater than the support force of the water. If we let go (stop pushing), the downwards force is less than the support force and the duck will pop up to the surface of the water. If we leave the toy duck alone, it floats because the weight force is once again balanced with the support force.

The article Building Science Concepts: Floating and sinking has additional information that may be helpful when exploring forces and other concepts.

In this activity, students explore the forces that underpin floating and sinking.

By the end of this activity, students should be able to:

• use a variety of objects to experiment with the forces of floating and sinking
• begin to use content vocabulary
• begin to discuss the forces that act on the objects in the water
• draw a diagram to label what they noticed.

Download the Word file (see link below).

Related content

Building Science Concepts: Floating and sinking supports learning about Physical World concepts of density, displacement and forces.

The level 4 Connected article A sinking feeling introduces the science concepts underpinning floating and sinking in the context of a boat race.

The PLD article Physical World – Floating and sinking curates Hub resources on this topic.

Our Floating and sinking Pinterest board is full of related resources.

Activity ideas

Will this float or sink? uses an interactive or paper-based graphic organiser to consider whether an object floats or sinks. Use it prior to a unit on floating and sinking to gauge students’ thinking and again during and after the unit as formative assessment.

Investigating floating and sinking is a set of activities that use play and exploration to directly observe how everyday objects behave in water.

Buoyancy in water – students make a Cartesian diver to demonstrate the relationship between volume, mass and density.

Useful links

Related Building Science Concepts books

• Floating and Sinking: How Objects Behave in Water (Book 37) – explores floating and sinking in water. This is aimed at levels 1–2.
• Understanding Buoyancy: Why Objects Float or Sink (Book 38) – explores floating and sinking including in other media. This is aimed at levels 3–4.

See our newsletters here .

Would you like to take a short survey?

This survey will open in a new tab and you can fill it out after your visit to the site.