September 29

Sep

29,

5th graders are learning about bridges and structural support by testing a variety of index card bridge designs. We discovered that triangles provide the most support and that bridges that use triangle supports are called truss bridges. If your child has an iPad or iPhone, there are lots of bridge building apps. Some of them aren't free but many of them offer at least a few free levels. Just search for "bridge builder" in the App Store.

6th graders voted on the challenge for this week and boat design was the winner. The task was to design a boat that would float for at least 10 seconds with a cargo of at least 25 pennies. They had specific materials to choose from in their design and a budget of $7.00 to "buy" those materials from me. It was tricky to stay within the budget for the initial design and to have enough left over for improvements after initial testing!