Video-Guided STEM Challenge
Building Bridges Challenge
In this challenge, your young engineers will design and test out a variety of bridge designs to help keep animals and humans safe on a busy highway that traverses Paper Town, USA.
1. Watch the video
2. Design three models of bridges to test out using the drafting materials (download below)
3. Build your models to find the strongest bridge
4. Take photos and share your project with us to be featured!
Grades: K - 5 Duration: Duration: 30 - 60 Minutes Subjects: Engineering Design, Life Science
Materials:
- 3DuxDesign cardboard and connectors
- Scissors
- Animal characters (make your own!)
- Weights for testing out the bridge strength (small water bottles work well)
- Books or boxes of equal height for supporting the bridge
Watch the Story...
Guidelines:
- If you do not have 3DuxDesign cardboard, help your bridge engineer make at least 10 strips of cardboard about 1 1/2" X 10" . Each strip should be the same width. For all but one strip, keep the corrugation vertical.for better structure. You may want to cut one strip with corrugation horizontal for your engineer to test the difference
- Help your engineer set up two Abutments (mountains). They should be of equal height and should have a measured and consistent spam during each test.
- Test the strength of each bridge design by slowly adding increasing weight until the bridge collapses. One easy way to do this is with a water bottle that is marked at regular intervals with numbers. Add a measured amount of water with each attempt until collapse.
- Have your engineer determine the best bridge design and then create the final version with decorations.
Bridge Examples:
The Beam Bridge is the most basic but it is not super strong.
This is one type of truss bridge with only two very long supports.
This truss bridge uses shorter steel beams, Our hypothesis is that this will be the strongest. (But we won't tell you our results).
The arch bridge is yet another popular design.
Here we opted for another beam bridge but with vertical beams for extra support.
