NORWICH – Students from the DCMO BOCES Chenango campus rode hovercrafts in the new gym on May 30. The students built five hovercrafts as part of a hands-on science and math project. The hovercrafts were powered by batteries, electric leaf blowers and some large fans. In speed trials, one hovercraft, weighing in at 310 lbs, reached a speed of 8 mph. Said Emanuel Polizzi, the math teacher who led the five teams, “We could have gone a lot faster, but I didn’t want to take a chance that we would lose control, and when you’re just two inches off the ground, 8 mph seems pretty fast.”
The teams, from Carpentry, Conservation, Auto Technology and Career Academy classes, came up with very creative designs and a number of innovations, including running big AC fans from a 12 volt battery with a power inverter. The project was intended to give students practice in the scientific method of investigation and experience with engineering design and testing. Students used theory, such as Newton’s Laws of Motion to predict speed and acceleration, and then tested the hovercrafts to see how well the theory and the final product matched. Teams of three to five students met once or twice per week over two months to work on the hovercrafts. They had to use math and trigonometry to design the basic shapes of the hovercrafts; then they used formulas for air pressure, electric power, and speed and acceleration. They designed tools to measure thrust, and they measured air pressure with hand-made pressure gauges. When the testing in the gym was completed, the students gave hovercraft rides to a group of pre-schoolers.