April 14, 2005
Hovercraft Hubbub
Since we were out of town last weekend, friends picked up my son's Science Fair project -- it made it to the Greater St. Louis Science Fair as both Fruit of the Murphy Loins' usually do. But this time there was something different - he was picked to be part of Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challange which I have to admit I'd never heard of before. The paperwork says there are 3,000-4,000 projects picked to enter each year, and that the idea is to extend to younger children the fun and excitement of Intel high school science fair. Near as I can tell, there were 47 projects picked from the GSLSF this year. So we're pretty happy.
We built a hovercraft (thus the title, Hovercraft Hubub - you can't go wrong with alliteration) and tested his hypothesis that it could carry two children (to wit, the Fruit of the Murphy Loins) in style and comfort. It sounds impressive, but it's a 4'x4' sheet of plywood, a shower curtain, a leaf blower, a coffee can lid, and assorted fasteners made from plans we found on the internet. It only "flew" inside our garage about 1.5" off the ground and didn't travel more than a couple of feet - although I spun it as much as the fruit allowed. I don't think we'll be winning the paid trip to Washington D.C., but it was a fun project to do and hopefully will encourage both the Fruit in their appreciation of the technical side of life. All the kids knew about it from the school science fair. When parents find out how easy it is to make and how well it did, I think there will be more hovercraft built at his school next year.
