Achievement Task

The Canadian Sailing Team has hired your Physics Consulting firm to design a new boat for competition. Your company's project involves conducting laboratory and library research on the physics of sail boating. You will determine the factors involved in controlling the speed and direction of sailboats.

Specifically, your lab team will investigate the effects of sail shape, size and orientation of the motion of the sailboat. Using a scale model of the new boat gather data which you will use to create your recommendation for the Canadian Sailing Team. You will want to investigate as many sail configurations as possible.

This is a very large project. Your lab group should devote themselves to collecting data for a single variable (ex. sail shape) while collaborating with the rest of the consulting team.

Use the background material found on the first page of this issue and your text references to prepare for this task. Develop a plan that involves dividing up each phase of the project into a variety of tasks and designating certain tasks as the responsibility of certain individuals. Devoting yourself to you're designated task and collaborating with others regarding the results of your efforts. Your report should include a discussion of these concepts.

1. How do different sail designs affect sailboat speed?
2. Identify the forces acting upon a sailboat illustrate these forces using a free-body diagram. Fully explain the origin of each force.
3. Explain, with reference to Newton’s Third Law, how sailboats are propelled through the water and how they are steered through the water.
4. Use basic vector principles to explain the propulsion of a boat through the water. Specifically show by calculation why certain sail angles with respect to the wind allow a boat to maximize its speed through the water.
5. Use physics to explain how a sailboat can move upwind.

The Canadian Sailing Team will want to see a model of your design before they approve funding for you to build the boat. Build your model with easily attainable items because you are on a very tight budget. The model sailboat should allow you to study the motion of the boat while varying several independent variables. (ex. the effect of variations in sail shape, size, or orientation)

The consulting firm’s team manager will assign you one of the independent variables to investigate. Your team should follow these steps...

1. Build a simple, but seaworthy sailboat hull using easily attainable materials. (ex. styrofoam or balsa wood)
2. Determine what dependent variables you will observe as you manipulate the assigned independent variable. Choose variables that will allow you to evaluate the changes you make to the sail configuration (ex. speed of the boats forward motion or the magnitude of the forces created by the sail)
3. Create a procedure that will allow you objectively measure the observed change in the dependent variables.
4. Once your procedure is approved by the team manager, collect and record you data.

1. What relationships exists between you dependent and independent variables.

2. What are the possible sources of error in your testing procedure? How could you work to eliminate these errors during future testing?

3. Why did the observed changes occur in the dependent variable? (Explain your results.)