Learning to Be a Scientist: Week 4, Day 3

Continuing Learning to Be a Scientist: the fourth concept is "Scientists make measurements," the third activity is "Which Is Stronger?"

(Early Bird insisted on being shirtless)

 This lesson was a bust. The idea is to test two bridges made of an index card; one flat and one folded accordion style. You are suppose to put a cup on the bridge and put in pebbles to test which is stronger. The accordion style bridge is suppose to be stronger. That is not what happened. Our flat bridge held 11 pebbles (I used decorative sea glass pebbles) and the folded bridge collapsed at 4. We tried two different sizes of index cards, we tried smaller folds and bigger folds. The folded one was weaker every time. I wonder if it is because I used thinner dollar store index cards? I am going to buy some thicker ones and have Builder Boy re-test this to see if that makes a difference. But it was disappointing to see it not work.

 


Builder Boy, living up to his name, started building stronger bridges with more blocks. He made one that held 25! So I just let them play making bridges.

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