We had a great time this week learning about the construction of bridges!
Your students were given the supplies of note cards, straws, play dough, paper clips, tape, string, packing tape, and scissors. With these supplies, your students were to design and create a bridge that would hold the most weight. Groups did not have to use each supply. Supplies were limited.
See below the bridge engineers at work!
Below are the finished bridges before weight was added.
The bridges that held the most weight are below......
Below are some of the things we learned while studying bridges:
- The pretty design of the bridge is not what mattered when designing and building a bridge to hold the most weight.
- What matters the most is that the bridge is stable and has a solid base.
- The lower the bridge is to the ground, the less stable the bridge needed to be to hold weight.
- The higher the bridge is away from the ground, the more stable bases were needed.
- The higher bridges were harder to build to hold weight, even though they looked more like bridges.
- Lower bridges held more weight than the taller bridges.
- The longer the bridge, the more support and stability it needed thoroughout the length of the bridge.
- If a material is taken away from the bridge, it will collapse or not hold near as much weight. If the bridge is not supported in the middle, it will sag.
