Battleship Maths is a game where students will use trigonometry, co-ordinate geometry and physics to destroy the opponents ships. Battleship Maths has been accepted for the RDS Science Live Lecture Series and will be launched for Science Week 2011.

There will be two fleets of battleships, the science fleet and maths fleet. The names of the battleships will be named after famous scientists and mathematicians e.g. LE Boyle, LE Hamilton. The battleships will work together to destroy the other fleet.

The room will be laid out in two grids with a low screen between the grids. The battleships will be represented by a large bucket that will serve as a target, it needs to be deep to stop the ping pong balls bouncing out. Each battleship team will have a launcher and two theodolites (to measure angles). Students will not be able to see the opponent battleships directly but there will be a tall flag in each battleship which teams can use to measure angles.

Students will work in teams of six, two will deal with the launcher, one angle and one force, two will measure distance to target by measuring angles and using maths to determine distance. The other team members will decide strategy such as the speed/direction of the battleship and talking to the fleet.

The students will build a projectile launcher and then calibrate it to determine the launch speed of the projectile in this case a ping pong ball. The launcher will use a simple elastic band launch system. Once the students have built and calibrated their launcher they must find the best angle and speed to hit a target area.

The second part is to understand how to determine the distance to the target. This is accomplished by two team members one standing at the location of the battleship and one standing at the edge of the grid. They can measure the distance between them off the grid and then they both measure the angle between them and the opponent flag. Once the two angles and the distance between them are found the distance to target can be calculated by using trigonometry.

The game will have several rounds and the game will end if one fleet is destroyed or the time runs out, in this case the fleet with the most intact battleships will win.