Bridges!

This week we did our culminating engineering project: building bridges!  Following the Engineering Design Process (Ask, Imagine, Plan, Create, Improve) to design and create a bridge that would cross a 15 inch span between our thick dictionary abutments, was stable enough for a matchbox car to make it to the other side safely, and be strong enough to support up to 200 pennies.

This challenge tested both their skills and creativity as an engineer as well as their skills as a collaborative member of a team. The materials available were sheets of paper, straws, craft sticks, paper clips, string and pieces of tape. Each material had a cost value assigned to it so that kids could keep track of how expensive their bridge was to build.

After the bridges were built, they were put to the test! Each bridge was first scored on how expensive it was to build. The next test was the stability test. Bridges were then tested to see how many successful times, out of 4 tries, a matchbox car rolled from one side of the bridge to the other. Third, the bridges were tested to see how much weight it could hold (in pennies). The strongest bridges could support over 200 pennies, while others could not support more than 10 pennies.

Once each team had the results of their test, they discussed ways they might redesign their bridge to improve its cost, stability, strength or all 3. We noticed that while the bridges demonstrated a wide range of costs, stability and strength levels, ALL groups worked very collaboratively. Pictures of each group and their original bridge are shown below.