How do you make a hovercraft? You would think it would be pretty easy. You would take a circular board, staple a thick plastic around it. Then cut a hole in it for the leaf blower to push air into the thick bubble. Well that isn’t the case. You have to know the physics and the background in the hovercraft, before stapling and duct taping things together. As though you may watch tons of videos and instructions, the process always depends on different cases, but the key point is to never give up. When attempted to construct a hovercraft, we probably went through more trial and error than our chemistry labs. It’s a good thing, that Olivia and I never threw in the towel, as we finally reached a combination of duct tape and holes we needed.
We watched and took notes from three different videos, all giving about the same instructions. Cut a 4 foot diameter circle from a piece of plywood, staple the shower curtain around it (cutting off the extra), then duct taping that down. Finally we would cut a circle about ¼ ft from the edge, and about the size of the leaf blower hole. The last step was to cut 6- 2 inch diameters on the shower curtain around a stapled down coffee can lid. Click for a picture. As for the guys of the videos, they make it seem very easy, but for us that was a different case. As we followed their steps with caution, but we left out one very important step: putting duct tape around the 2 inch circles to avoid rips. But not only did we have rips, but we also had a very loud sound coming from where the lid and circles were. We decided to test different lids and then how they were attached to the board like either using duct tape, staples, or a screw with a bolt and washers. After experimenting with different holes, lids, and duct tape, we decided to get help from outside the internet and classroom, so we went to Mr. Gibson, but our real help was Mr. Guillaume. Mr. Guillaume told us to try removing the lid, and placing 4- 3 inch diameter circles around the outer of the little circles. When tested this method, it worked great! Even though it wasn’t a donut shape on the bottom, it was still the best type of hovercraft to ride and push each other on.
At the game, we were a little nervous getting started. But as the night went on, our hovercraft was very popular as we never had a dull moment besides the break time we took, which wasn’t fast enough for the little kids. We had all kinds of different ages test the hovercraft several times. From a one- year old to fifty- year old. We even convinced Mrs. French and Tom, to ride the hovercraft (of course pictures were taken). I can’t tell who was more tired: Me, Olivia, or the hovercraft. As the clock was coming to an end, we allowed everybody to have one final ride. Then night ended with Mrs. Harris and Mr. Moskos, trying the hovercraft. Everybody gave a very great reviews about the hovercraft. But without our trials and errors, we would have never made it to Steam night.
“Failures are part of Life. If you don’t fail, you don’t learn. If you don’t learn, you’ll never change.” This quote also sums up our learning process as rarely you’ll do something completely right the first time. It might not take you 20 times like Olivia and I, but you should take you 2 or 3 trials to get something right. If we didn’t have failure we would never learn, and our ways we used to construct our hovercraft wouldn’t change and everybody’s would be the same. Failure creates uniqueness and teaching moments.