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THURSDAY, JUNE 17, 2021
Ethan Moser, Bodee Davis and Brenden Tanksley paddle around in the Galien River
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Bodee Davis and Konstantine Bauer haul the kayak into the Galien River
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Physics students paddle their kayaks in the Galien River
New Buffalo physics students float down Galien River in handcrafted kayaks BY FRANCESCA SAGALA
t was Ben Lijewski who conceived the idea to have students in his physics class build kayaks. “I have some crazy ideas sometimes…Mr. Eberly helps me with these ideas,” he said, adding that it was really “everybody’s idea.” Students, along with New Buffalo High School science teacher Richard Eberly, tested their finished product when they took a brief journey down the river in their kayaks at the Galien River kayak launch along Red Arrow Highway in New Buffalo Township Saturday, June 12. To build the kayaks, Lijewski said that they first used white oak for all the framing and marine grade plywood for the outside skin. Brass screws and twopart epoxy were used to hold everything together. “Don’t have any holes in your boat” was a standout lesson that Lijewksi learned from the project. Lijewski also made a miniature canoe
out of concrete. “I made a mold for the concrete and placed the concrete over it to make the canoe,” he said. Lijewski, said that Michigan Tech, which is where he’s heading in the fall, kicks off the school year by having the students make concrete canoes. “This entire class has been a lot of fun because Eberly’s been able to incorporate many different units into the kayaks and he made class really enjoyable and fun,” he added. Eberly said when he told the students to pick the curriculum, they chose electricity and magnetism with circuits, rotational motion, and fluid dynamics. Eberly said they did each of those units, picking the units up from Arizona State University and North Carolina State University. “We went through the physics curriculum and then for the lab portion of it, I always have them do an activity,” Eberly said.
Physics students with teacher Richard Eberly float around in the Galien River
Students originally wanted to build race boats (what Eberly used to build when he was young) but decided on kayaks instead. Students also built a Bluetooth Wi-Fi stereo system in the classroom, which went into a kayak. According to Bodee Davis, the students began building them at the start of the third trimester.
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avis said fluid dynamics is, in a nutshell, the “interactions of gases and liquids.” “We’re going to build these to help give a physical demonstration of some of those properties that we’re trying to learn,” Davis said of their thought process to build the kayaks. Davis added that they used the CanYak blueprint series from Glen-L Boats to build them. The previous night, Brenden Tanksley
Brenden Tanksley paddles his kayak in the Galien River
had been up until 12:30 working on his kayak. Students came in several weekends and, even after graduating June 5, came into the school the following week every day to try and finish them. “We put a decent amount of work into them,” Davis, who is headed to the University of Michigan in the fall, said. Davis said most of the students in the class have been on the high school’s robotics team. “We’re all fairly hands on and kind of like doing stuff like this – we’re very fortunate that Mr. Eberly gave us the opportunity to do this,” he said. Eberly attributed the class’ success to the students themselves. “It was an amazing class – the kids that came in, all of them were getting STEM certified through the state of Michigan and all of them wanted to become engineers…It was a once in a decade dream class,” Eberly said.
Richard Eberly (right) helps Ben Lijewski haul his kayak into the water
