What do vinegar, baking soda, and empty glue bottles have in common? They are the ingredients that Mrs. Whitaker’s sophomore IB chemistry class were told to use to build a winning boat. The class had two weeks to balance the equation of the vinegar plus baking soda reaction and determine the correct proportions to make the maximum reaction. Not only did the students have to use the right amount of each reactant, they also were challenged to creatively insert the materials into the bottles.

The day of the races, the boats were tested to find the speed by dividing the distance the boat went by the amount of time before the momentum stopped increasing. The winning boats from each class received extra credit towards their lab grade. The boat with the fastest speed was made by Daniel Palermo and Leah Williams with a speed of 347 centimeters per second.

“I got the idea to wrap the baking soda in a coffee filter before putting it in the bottle with the vinegar. It didn’t work very well on the test run but right before the final race, we multiplied our ingredients by one and a half and the bottle went faster than ever. After it fell of the water trough it kept spinning in circles on the ground,” Williams said.

Even though the races were over, students still had to type up a written lab report incorporating all of their data. Other than typing the lab report, students remembered the lab as exciting, competitive, and something that made them feel like a child again.