170 likes | 347 Views
Let ’ s Give It A Try!. Building Toothpick Towers. Building Toothpick Towers. Build the tallest Tower that can hold a book for at least 5 seconds. Materials Tooth picks Modeling clay Ruler Wax paper (for desk coverage). Building Toothpick Towers: Round 1. Form Teams of 3 or 4 persons
E N D
Let’s Give It A Try! Building Toothpick Towers
Building Toothpick Towers • Build the tallest Tower that can hold a book for at least 5 seconds. • Materials • Tooth picks • Modeling clay • Ruler • Wax paper (for desk coverage)
Building Toothpick Towers: Round 1 • Form Teams of 3 or 4 persons • Draw your idea on paper (5 min) • Build it with team (10 min) • Test your tower (2 min) • Continuous Improvement (Build it again – only better!)
Building Toothpick Towers: Round 1: Within-team discussion • Take a few minutes to talk with your team: • What worked within your team? • What didn’t work for your team? • Do you think that if you had another try at this you could use your learnings and make a better tower?
Design Considerations • Tallest tower • Strongest tower • Strongest and Tallest
Lets take a few minutes and try to get some ideas from other structures…. Can they improve our Toothpick Towers?
Great Pyramid of Giza • Built 2560 BC • Tallest man-made structure for over 3,800 years
Eiffel Tower in Paris, France • It took two years to build. • 81 stories high building. • Fifty engineers and designers produced 5,300 drawings to make tower
Bridges • Can you see something similar to the previous examples? • Triangles inherently strong
Building Toothpick Towers: Round 2 • Draw your idea on paper (5 min) • Build it with team (8 min) • Test your tower (2 min) • Continuous Improvement (Build it again – only better!)
Building Toothpick Towers: Round 2: Within-team discussion • Lets discuss your experiences • What worked within your team? • What didn’t work for your team? • Lets review how this exercise is an example of scientific inquiry
Building Toothpick Towers: Round 2: Between-team discussion • Lets see if other teams had the same thoughts about their approaches to building the marshmallow tower • What worked within your team? • What didn’t work for your team? • Do you think that if you had another try at this you could use your learnings and make a better tower?
MARSHMALLOW TOWER Food for Thought • How high did building your marshmallow tower go? Measure it with your ruler to find out high you built or put your structure to the test by putting the pre-selected mass test units on top of it to see if it will support them. • What shapes did you make with your marsh-mallows and spaghetti to create a sturdy tower? • What could you do to build a higher/stronger marshmallow tower? What would happen if you used different sized marshmallows? How about if you built a wider base or narrower base? • Be sure to predict what you think is going to happen. Then test your question. Are marshmallows good building materials? What other materials can you use to build a tower? Try building a tower using clay and straws or toothpicks and peas.
Other Curriculum Ideas Math lesson-calculate costs, measurement Social Studies-Architecture in different regions/parts of the world ELA-journaling, story writing Research-structures