Engineering: Winter, Week 6

This week in Engineering, we've focused on the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We started our week as usual, playing Jenga and building towers out of our plastic blocks, using those activities as springboards to discuss load-bearing structures and stable foundations. For the last half of the week, though, we worked on repairing a tower I'd already built out of popsicle sticks , one that was badly off-balance. We began by reading the Leaning Tower section in Super Structures, with a particular emphasis on the structural strengthening that was undertaken beginning in 1990. From there, I brought out the tower we'd be working on, and the kids began brainstorming different methods for keeping the tower upright. We quickly began taking turns adding additional popsicle sticks to the tower, and it was great to see the kids testing out their different ideas and building on top of the work that other people had started. In the end, the kids ended up taking out one level of the tower to improve its stability and then building up from the top again. A job well done!