Sink or Swim: Rocky Hill Youngsters Test Their Vessels in This Afternoon's Cardboard Regatta

EAST GREENWICH — The assignment -- as Peter Hanney, the school spokesman, put it -- sounds deceptively easy.

Sit in a boat and paddle for one minute.

The catch is, the children had to design and made their own vessels, using only cardboard and one roll of duct tape.

They launch them today at 2 p.m. in the swimming hole at school's waterfront. The annual "Cardboard Regatta" is a "great example of both experiential and Project-Based Learning," he said, and the children had to apply their knowledge of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts (and Design) and Math to float their boats.

"Some students will emerge dry," he predicted, "some a little wet, others much wetter."

The experiment tests the fifth-grade students grasp of buoyancy and balance, he said.