Cardboard boat with 1 roll of duct tape

This was a fun project I did during the beginning of my capstone PLTW course in high school. We were given one roll of duct tape by the teacher and had to build a boat to get across the school pool. We were also allowed small 3D printed parts. 

The boat my partner and I designed worked well, we were one of the two boats that made it across the pool out of the 10 boats in the class. 

Final cardboard boat design my partner and I came up with

After several prototypes and lots of research on cardboard boats, I ultimately decided to go for a simple design with stiffness added through 5 layers of cardboard rather than an internal ribbing system like some of the other teams were using. For my 3D printed parts, I designed a clamp that held the cardboard lip together to stop the entire boat from collapsing outward. 

The boat without 3D printed clamps

Second iteration of the 3D printed clamp

My partner found a massive piece of cardboard outside a refrigerator store which we used for the outer shell. We used most of our duct tape to cover the bottom of the boat in duct tape to try to make it more waterproof. 

Duct tape covering overlapping edges and bottom

Leftover cardboard was used to make creative hats. 

Below is the video of the class doing the cardboard boat race