Monday 13 January 2014

Strong, Stronger, Strongest. . . . Engineers at work

Today we worked in partners and explored which shape is more stable for building - a triangle or a square.   Our task was to make two, two level structures with toothpicks and marshmallows.  The first structure had to be made with only squares.  The second one with only triangles.  After making our creations we had to decide which was stronger - the one made with triangles or the one made with squares. As we began building many of us discovered the triangle made a structure stronger and more stable.  Some of us combined both shapes to make a very stable structure.
 Here are some pictures of our creations!   

 These builders decided to use a combination of squares and triangles.  It was a fairly sturdy structure!


I think we should add this here~

This isn't very stable. . . .
 Look what we made!

Look!  Its standing all by itself!

This is a bit wobbly!

These two engineers made a foundation before they started their structure ~ future architects?

Do you think the architects of today started out by building with marshmallows and toothpicks?

3 comments:

  1. Wow. I like the two architects' foundation structure. Was it more stable? From
    jack's Mom

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  2. Mrs. lembke's Class, Minnesota
    We really like your projects. We would like to try that. Could the structures hold anything, like a piece of paper? Nice job!

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    Replies
    1. Raza, Emma,Nicholas and Colin from Mrs. Betts'class24 January 2014 at 09:12

      Thank you for commenting on our class blog.No we didn't put a piece of paper on top of the structures. But we made three cylinders out of three types of paper.The types of paper we used were:white paper,construction paper and Bristol board.Then we put dictionaries on top of them. White paper held 0 dictionaries, construction paper held 2 dictionaries and Bristol board held 10 dictionaries.So that means Bristol board held the most dictionaries.

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