Woodland students take virtual field trip to maritime museum

WOODLAND — First-graders at North Fork Elementary School took a virtual field trip to the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria, Ore. Museum field educator Kelly McKenzie presented a lesson about boat building to the students. She walked them through concepts like buoyancy to explain how something massive, such as a cargo ship, can still float on water. McKenzie then had students participate in an experiment, showing them items including an inflated balloon, a glue stick, toy car, sunglasses and others. She instructed them to form a hypotheses for each item if they thought it would float and why. Then she dropped them in water one by one. Students were surprised to learn things like a glue stick or crayon would float. Then, students built their own boats. The museum provided each student with a free kit to build real floating model boats that they would decorate with crayons and markers. “A variety of different scientific concepts explain how incredibly heavy objects can float,” McKenzie said to students, according to a news release. “The reason this ship floats is because the molecules making up the ship are spread apart, providing it with buoyancy and allowing it to carry tons of cargo.”