I wanted to do a fun science project with my little group to touch
on the Structures and Mechanisms strand while I was in their class and what
better way to do that than build bridges out of craft sticks?!
We watched this awesome Bill Nye the Science Guy video (previous post) and talked a bit about tension and compression and we looked up
the four main types of bridges.
The question that had to be answered was:
What kind of bridge will hold the most weight?
To prove that even paper could hold a certain amount of weight if it was folded right, I first challenged them to build a bridge with 5 pieces of paper (and a small piece of tape), that could hold up a stapler. They embraced the challenge and loved building their first "bridge".
I gave them the following
guidelines and let them build their bridges over about a week.
Students were to use only white glue and 150 craft sticks. That's it. At first, they thought it couldn't be done, but then I showed them several videos on YouTube of students younger than them doing it with even less sticks. They were impressed and they were excited to get started!

Thanks for sharing :) I teach 6th grade math, and this is perfect for Enrichment. Looking forward to using this year
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Shenanigans in 6th Grade Math
Im in 6th grade and doing a project except I created the same Idea as you !!
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