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Description: In this project, we needed to make the tallest structure out of straws and 2 ft of masking tape. It must stand for 1 minute and can not be externally supported (except for the ground). We got 30 minutes to make it.
Brainstorm: I thought triangles were the best option, because triangles are the best shape. Everybody agreed, so we decided to make something out of triangles on the bottom. I thought that a pyramid would not go well, as it would take up too much area on the bottom, so we settled for a staggered triangle design.
Procedure: We started by building the bottom bit, which looked like this:
You can kind of see all of the triangles on the bottom. Ignore all of the extra straws for now.
Because of the varying straw sizes, it was already starting to tip over because of the imperfect triangles. Also, at the end of the second layer of the organized part of the structure, the teacher told us that we had 10 minutes left. We then panicked, because other groups were doing much better with their structures, which were not organized, and started building some long straw sticks to put on the top.
It ended up looking like this:
Here, you can see two main different structures. There is one very long straight stick, and the other is the rectangle-type thing that is holding it up. Once we taped them together as shown, we noticed that the bends in the straw were causing some problems. Then we taped all of the extra straws, like the yellow one on the top (which isn't doing anything), the white straw holding one of the bendy parts of the red straw stick rigid, and the purple one making sure that the red straw won't fail at the bend below the rectangle.
This is the final product:
It clocked in at 49 inches. We ended up winning the competition.
SOUL Reflection:
Strength of your work: Our structure had a very strong base. This held up our project and helped us win the contest.
Opportunities to improve your project: I think one of the hardest parts of this was pacing ourselves. Next time, I will go for a less complicated design and try to spend the same time on all of the parts of the project. Also, we could have held the joints in the straws together by sticking them into another straw.
Understanding - what have you learned through this project: I have learned that it is not a good idea to just "wing it". We didn't have a plan for this, and therefore, we couldn't have good time management.
Limitations: We were using old straws. They were all different dimensions and also hade tape on them sometimes. Also, we didn't have infinite tape, which made the whole thing harder.
WISCR:
I think I used insightful and critical thinking the most during this project. This is because I was able to think and adapt to different situations during this project.
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