STEM Challenge

Last week Mrs S gave us a challenge to design and make a spaghetti tower using only 20 pieces of spaghetti, a meter of tape, some string and a marshmallow. Our spaghetti towers had to hold the marshmallow on top for at least 1 minute to be successful.

Before we started planning our towers we researched different tall towers of the world like the Eifel Tower, Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Space Needle. We figured out that to be successful the tower would need a strong, wide base and a thin top so it would balance. Once we gathered this information we then began to plan and sketch our tower with the person next to us. We had to make sure our diagrams were clear and labelled. 

We then had 30 minutes to create the tallest spaghetti tower we could! It was really difficult as the sticky tape wouldn't stick tot eh spaghetti, some of the spaghetti broke and some groups run out of materials. We had to use our problem solving skills and think of ways to over come these problems while using team work.

Some towers were successful and some weren’t but that is a part of Design and technology. Once the challenge was complete we then had to reflect on our design and think about what worked well and what we could improve next time. Next term, Mrs S is going to give us the same challenge again to see if our skills have improved.

Congratulations to Layla and Sam who built the tallest tower which was nearly 60cm tall and could hold the marshmallow for over 1 minute. Amazing work girls!

Stem from carisheppener