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Buoyancy Cup Low participation; high excitement!
B Y CECILIA STORM
idea to incorporate the Buoyancy Cup as an activity on Spirit Week. The teams would build boats on campus and then race to win points for their team. This is an excellent idea because Buoyancy Cup is a special activity that has been going on for years now. It would be a shame to stop it.
Miami Country Day School hosts the Buoyancy Cup, a Middle and Lower School event, that happens once a year. The Buoyancy Cup is where a team of students construct a boat and paddles out of duct tape and cardboard (on their own time). Then, they race the boats across the pool against other students. This year, the Buoyancy Cup occurred on March 22, 2019, with the lowest amount of participants in its history. Mr. Finny, the Dean of Middle School, and Mr. Mathes, the Director of Middle School, are the ones who run the buoyancy cup. While Mr. Finny is the announcer, Mr. Mathes is the one who sets up the boats on the pool deck and creates the schedule. Mr. Mathes said, "Up until now, buoyancy cup has only been getting bigger every year. This year, the amount of people participating has dropped by half. We're going to have to analyze if the interest is still there." Mr. Mathes believes that part of the reason why people have stopped participating is that students who started in lower school did it so often that they became bored. Mr. Mathes and Mr. Finny have come up with the
The Buoyancy Cup first started in upper school PHOTOS BY A L EXI S K APL AN when it was proposed by Clockwise from top left: Rachel Maloy and Lola Rhodes, Ariana an upper school physics Clarke and Ana Marie Nunez, Nate Giovannucci and Logan teacher, Mr. Hori, as a Traband, Isabella Smilowitz and Hannah Webb, and Ben Rosas and Bruce Cohen physics project. It was intended as a physics project to determine whether something floats or if something sinks. "It went on for five or six years until Ms. Aranson who said that we should do it the middle school," said Mr. Mathes, "Finally, the lower school adopted the idea, and the whole school was doing it. Now the upper school has banned it since so little people were competing because many of them were doing it in lower and middle school." Mr. Finny said, "We started giving extra credit in science a few years ago to encourage people to participate. People who participated in the buoyancy cup get some form of bonus in science because it is a science-based activity." Students who participate in buoyancy cup earn extra credit points in homework assignments or other things in their science classes.
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