STRUCTURES
Making a Paper Square
Short & Wide
1. For our first challenge, we were tasked with making a square, circle, and triangle paper structure to see how many books it could support.
This page consists of different challenges we worked on in pairs to accomplish each task.
Our wide square did not hold even one book before caving in as shown.
Making a Paper Triangle
Short & Wide
Making a Paper Circle
Short & Narrow
Making a Paper Square
Tall & Narrow
Our narrow square held one book but when we tried to add another, it caved in.
Making a Paper Triangle
Short & Narrow
The short triangle that Bri made held 7 books! She doubled the paper which made it stronger and sturdier.
Making a Paper Circle
Tall & Narrow
Our narrow circle did the best out of all the groups on the first try! It held 3 textbooks, one notebook, and one planner.
Lastly, we tried a tall and narrow circle which held 4 textbooks before falling. With this one we noticed the paper did not crumble, rather the paper just slipped and fell.
*General Idea:*
Round is good, thick edges good, short good, & triangle not bad
Tall-Wide-Square
Tall-Wide-Triangle
Tall-Wide-Circle
Tall-Narrow-Circle
Short-Wide-Triangle
Short-Wide-Square
Short-Narrow-Circle
0
0
0
4
1
0
3.5
Shape
Max
Our Class Results:
Our wide triangle did not hold even one book before caving.
2. For our second challenge, we were tasked with making a structure out of toothpicks and gumdrops to see if it would support books.
Lexi and I's structure held 2 textbooks, almost 3 and 5 small books!
OUR CLASS PLAN:
wide base
triangles
crossing toothpicks
thick
3. For our third challenge, we were tasked with making a structure in 15 minutes, out of only a newspaper with 5 pages and a foot of tape. We were competing with the class to see who could create the highest structure.
Shannon and I started by creating a wide base for support. We stuffed the base with newspaper balls to make it heavier and keep the paper standing up. We rolled newspapers and continued stacking them by putting one inside the other.
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OUR STRUCTURE: 118 cm high
WINNER: 183 cm high
Materials:
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gumdrops
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toothpicks
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textbooks
Materials:
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newspaper-5 pages
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tape-1 ft.
Materials:
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white computer paper
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textbooks
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tape
Building Challenge: WANDA THE WACKY WATERCRAFT
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The Challenge: Build a boat that can hold 25 pennies for at least ten seconds before sinking. In this challenge, kids follow the design process to build a boat that can stay afloat and upright while weighed down with a heavy load of pennies.
Materials:
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straws
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plastic wrap
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water/bucket
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25 pennies
Building Challenge: BEATRICE, THE BLISSFUL BUNGING BARBIE
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The Challenge: Your goal is to create a bungee of rubber bands that will get your Barbie’s hair to touch the ground. Don’t let your Barbie touch the ground or she dies. Measure your distance. Make a hypothesis of how many rubber bands you’ll need. Write it down. Tie your rubber bands together. (Don’t add the barbie to the bungee though.) Measure the length of your rubber band bungee just to see. Add on your Barbie. You’ll need to be thinking about how much the rubber bands will stretch — this is where the experimentation excitement happens! How much will the rubber bands stretch when you add a weight? (the Barbie)
Materials:
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​​​Barbie Doll
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rubber bands
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ruler
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banister
Sandy and her Squishy Structures
Tony the Tasty Toothpick Machine
Ned the Narrow Newspaper
# of Rubber bands What Happened
I think it will take 15 rubber bands for Barbie's hair to touch the ground!
Trial 1: 15
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Trial 2: 25
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Trial 3: 20
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Trial 4: 22
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Trial 5: 21
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about halfway
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hit floor hard
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hair almost touched
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hit floor barely
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Only hair touched! Success!!
Height of Barbie's fall (height from banister to floor): 159 inches or 13 feet 3 inches
Length of Barbie with 15 rubber bands attached.
TRIAL #2
TRIAL #4
TRIAL #1
TRIAL #5
WINNER!
TRIAL #3
Final length of Barbie with 21 rubber bands attached= 5 feet 3 inches
My Results: My boat not only held 25 pennies but I was able to put in 45 before water started slowly coming in through the bottom. After adding 25 pennies, my boat held for about 30 seconds while I added more, reaching 45 total. At the end of the video, you can see water slowly coming in at the bottom, however, it never sunk. I think it definitely would have sunk if I let it sit for a while with the weight of the pennies or if I added in more pennies, it would have sunk faster.
My Plan in Making the Boat: I wanted to make it a light as possible so it could sustain more weight from the pennies. I also wrapped the plastic wrap around the bottom of the boat multiple times to make it stronger and tighter.
MY DESIGN IN THE REAL WORLD
I chose my lamp to represent my design in the real world. I chose it because I think my lamp is a perfect representation of what Shannon and I did with our newspaper structure, which was creating a larger base to support the weight of the structure. The lamp is built in the same manner, with a wide base to support the lamp and then it gets skinner as it goes up.
MY DESIGN IN THE REAL WORLD
I chose a picture stand to represent my design in the real world. I chose it because I think it is a great representation of one strategy Lexi and I had in making our gumdrop structure. As you can see in our structure, we added in triangle shapes with the toothpicks to make our structure stronger and hold up the centers in between the gumdrops. This picture stand is also made out of a triangle shape, as well as other shapes.