The Boundary Waters
Summer or Science By: Tyler Brady
Summer Fun! Part One
This summer I went to the Boundary Waters in Minnesota. I went with my dad, my friend Jay, his brother Aaron, and their dad Jim. Also, I went with my friend Jack, his dad Don, my friend Ty, and his dad Toni too. We went in late July, and to get there we had about an 8 hour drive. We decided to go because we went about 3 or 4 years ago, but we weren't able to carry a lot of things through the portages (which are places on the river that you can't canoe through, so there was a path you had to carry your stuff on), or canoe as much as we had to when we were younger, so we were looking for a vacation, and decided to try it again now that we were older, and stronger. To get to where we were camping we canoed through a bunch of different lakes and rivers, walked, and carried bags through portages, and then found a campsite where we stayed on a certain lake that we chose because the fishing was good. Some things we did while we were there was found rock we could jump off of into the lake, and went fishing. We were also shooting squirrels and a snapping turtle (he kept trying to steal our fish) with a slingshot and rocks. And on the last night we were there we saw two shooting stars. It was a fun vacation!
Look at Me! Part Two
Campsite
This looked a lot like our campsite except there was four places for tents and it was a bit bigger.
Conoeing
This is a picture my dad took of me on a river with our friends in front of us.
Middle of Nowhere
This is what it looked like, total wilderness.
The Science of It... Part Three
The first connection to scince on the Boundary Waters trip was when we were canoeing we were using Newton's third law of motion which is "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." This connects to science because as you paddle you use force to make the canoe go faster, and if there is more weight in the canoe you have to have more force to get your canoe going faster. You can also push the water away from you to make yourself go backwards. My second connection to science was shooting the squirrels and a turtle with a slingshot. This connects to science too because we had to use angles so we would hit the animal, velocity so we knew how far and fast it had to go, and gravity so we knew how far we should pull it back before it would hit the ground.
Part Four: I Wonder...
The four questions that I have are:
1. How far did we canoe the whole time we were there?
2. How much pressure was the rock putting on the squirrel of turtle when we shot it?
3. What was the maximum velocity we traveled at when canoeing?
4. What was the average power we were putting on when canoeing?
Sources
-http://www.sciencebuddies.org/blog/2011/08/slingshot-science-the-physics-in-angry-birds.php
-http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/outdoor-activities/water-sports/canoeing4.htm
-http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/newtlaws/Lesson-4/Newton-s-Third-Law
-http://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/outdoor/canoe-and-camp-the-boundary-waters-20121009
-http://wallpaperfolder.com/wallpapers/boundary+waters