How can I find the displacement of a v-shape-like boat?

Question

Okay, so I have a cardboard boat competition coming up this week and I would love to find out how much the boat will sink in water. The boat's dimensions are here:

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/8309/boatdimensionszf7.png (all inches!)

and the volume of the boat is 35910 in^3. The people's weight going in the boat is 276 lbs, and the boat's weight is 25.5 lbs. I think that's all the information you need. If you need more, tell me.

Thank you sooo very much if you figure this out. I'm only in 8th grade so I don't know a lot about these formulas.

Answer 1

Lenna, the boat will displace its own weight, and the weight of anything inside it. So the boat will displace 25.5 + 276 which is 300.5 pounds. The shape of the boat has nothing to do with it.

Water weights about .036127 pounds per cubic inch, so figure how many cubic inches will be needed to balance 300.5 pounds.

You need to work out the dimensions of the bow and the rest of the boat, and see how far down the boat will go to displace its weight.

I will tell you that the boat will draw about 6 inches of water.

I will leave the rest of the math to you.

Regards,

Dan