Pencil Tower, 2006

World's Tallest Tower of Pencils, 2006

     On March 21, 2005, Eisenhower Junior High School set the first world record for the tallest pencil tower. This first pencil tower--shown in the pictures below--used 1,466 pencils and measured 7 feet, 2 and 1/2 inches high.

     On Friday, October 20, 2006 (from 1:00-5:00 PM), several dozen ninth grade students at Eisenhower Junior High School in Taylorsville, Utah, broke the world record for the Tallest Tower of Pencils. They successfully made a tower of pencils that used 1,943 pencils and measured precisely nine-feet six-inches tall.

     The world record for the Tallest Tower of Pencils is recognized by The Book of Alternative Records in Leipzig, Germany, and the American Pencil Collectors Society.

     There are eight rules for making the Tallest Tower of Pencils. They are as follows:

1) Three or more students may attempt to construct the tallest free-standing tower of unsharpened pencils-- which are no longer than 7-1/2 inches in length and no wider than 5/16 of an inch in width. No adhesives or other supporting materials may be used to support the pencil tower, and no notches or groves may be cut into the pencils to support the tower. 2) The width of the pencil tower must not exceed three feet in diameter. 3) Once students have placed the pencils in a particular position they may not substantially reposition them to offer support or prevent the tower from collapsing. However, they may remove pencils from the top of the developing tower and replace them at any point in the building process. 4) Pencils may be arranged in any fashion. 5) All pencils forming the tower must be visible at all times. 6) There is no time limit to this event. 7) The height of the pencils used to construct the tower--from its base to its top--must be determined to the closest 1/8 of an inch by using a precise method of measurement. (One-eighth of an inch is equal to 0.3175 centimeter.) 8) The number of pencils used to construct the tower--from its base to its top--should be accurately counted (or reasonably estimated if the tower collapses prior to its pencils being counted).