Engineering Challenge 3
Bridge Iterations

Activity Overview

Design thinking and engineering challenges help us engage our observation and critical thinking skills and are essential practice in incorporating the qualities of curiosity, creativity, growth mindset and grit in our experiences with real-world problems. This is the third week of our series of engineering challenges. In this week’s activity, students will build three different bridges of increasing strength. Students will test and measure the sturdiness of each bridge in this comparative study by using the weight of pennies to quantify strength. The more pennies the bridge can hold, the stronger it is.

What You Need

• Three shalow, lightweight containers (repurposed margarine containers, takeout sauce containers, or something similar is ideal)

• Collection of pennies

• Tape

• Engineering Challenge: Week 3

• A collection of Maker Materials to work with (see challenge prompt for the specific list of what you will need)

Steps

1. Follow the instructions for our Engineering Challenge: Week 3.

2. Collect your materials and follow the steps to build your own bridges.

• First, students will build with standard 8.5” x 11” paper.

• Next, students will build a new bridge with cardboard.

• Finally, students will build with wooden craft sticks.

3. With each new material, use the guiding questions to consider any ways that the design could be improved on, without changing the materials that are used. Can the WAY the material is used be reconsidered to increase the strength of the bridge?

4. To test out your designs, place a container on the center of your bridge, and add pennies one at a time, until the bridge collapses (or you run out of pennies!). If you make any upgrades, replace the container without removing the previous amount of pennies to test if the design is really stronger or not. When you have your final version of each bridge built as sturdy as possible, keep the final amount of pennies inside, and label the container “Bridge A,” “Folded Paper,” or any title you choose to distinguish your prototypes.

5. Finally, once all three bridges have been built, visually compare or count the total amount of pennies held by each final version.

Guiding Questions

• How do the pieces work together to make the bridge strong?

• If you could add something different to make it stronger, what other items would you select? Why? How would they work in your project? What about that thing would make your bridge better? Does it have any special qualities that would make it better? Can you recreate those qualities by using the materials you do have in a new or different way?

• Can you change anything about the way you are using the materials you are currently using to make them any stronger? (fold the paper, stack in a different way, add more of the material)

• What made this bridge stronger than that one?

• What challenges arise while making your project? What are some ways you can try to solve them?

Extensions

• Explore the Engineering Challenge Project Bank, and try out a different challenge each day.

• Try our Bridge Building Challenge for more bridge engineering fun!

• What did our Pre-K friends in Sao Paulo do when they found a large, persistent puddle in their playground? They worked together to come up with an ambitious solution and Built Bridges Through Project-Based Learning! Watch as our empowered students collaborate, solve problems, and learn a range of skills through relevant, meaningful, real world experiences.