Summer SAVY, Session 6 Day 2, “Engineering Design: Full STEAM Ahead!” (1st-2nd)
What a terrific Tuesday we had today! Our day started out with our morning meeting, where we shared our favorite colors and what we were excited to learn today. “Building bridges” was the common excitement shared by all! Then, we reviewed the three bridges we learned about yesterday, along with drawing and labeling each one in our journals. The students did a great job using the target vocabulary arch bridge, beam bridge, suspension bridge, abutment, pier, and span. This wonderful engineering conversation dove us directly into our first bridge-building activity. The task? Build a beam bridge using only paper! However, before we could begin construction, we needed to walk through the Engineering Design Process to ASK good questions, IMAGINE what our bridge would look like, PLAN the criteria required for a successful build, CREATE the bridge and test it out, and IMPROVE our design to make it even better. The students were given various types of paper such as copy paper, cardstock, cardboard, paper bags, and index cards. We evaluated additional ways to use the paper, other than it just remaining flat, so that the bridge was strong enough to hold the weight applied. Many wonderful suggestions, such as folding the paper, stacking several sheets, and changing the shape of the paper, were thrown out. Then we got to work using paper and tape to engineer our beam bridges. This was the highlight of our day! Once their bridge was completed, we tested its strength and stability using pennies and metal nuts. This offered each child the space to evaluate what worked and what needed improvement. Our favorite part was seeing how many pennies or metal nuts they could fit on their personal bridge. Can you believe one bridge held over 130 metal nuts?!
After lunch, we took a walk to the 21st Street Bridge and discussed the materials we noticed that were used in making the bridge, the shapes we observed in the parts of the bridge, and what type of bridge we thought it was. We even spied a small bridge on some playground equipment on our walk back!
Our brain break was enjoyed by two short 5-minute videos on what makes bridges so strong and what civil engineers do.
The afternoon discussion was learning what static equilibrium is, and we tested this concept using hangars with water bottles attached to either end. This showed us that the forces (gravity and the water bottles) that are acting upon the object (the hangar) do not cause the object to move, and therefore, the hangar was in a state of equilibrium. Then we predicted what would happen to the hangar if we moved one of the water bottles. Our predictions were spot on that the hangar would tilt to one side; however, we also noticed that after the hangar stopped wobbling, this is also an example of static equilibrium because the forces acting upon the object (still gravity and water bottles) were no longer causing the object to move. The goal of this activity is to reinforce the concept that objects do not have to be “balanced” in our colloquial sense of the word to be in static equilibrium.
This discussion led us into more thought-provoking discussions answering questions such as:
- “What is a structure?”
- “What makes a structure strong?”
- “What makes a structure sturdy?”
- “What is a force?”
These terms were reinforced with our final activity of the day, where we tested a one-story structure and a tower for their stability and strength when a new force (weight or wind) is acted upon it. This activity displayed the strength and sturdiness of a structure and taught us ways to improve the structures when they collapsed or tilted, which in turn helped us to “improve” our own paper bridges at the end of class.
Table Talk:
- What does a civil engineer do?
- Tell me about a beam bridge, an arch bridge, and a suspension bridge, and what is a pier, an abutment, and the span of a bridge?
- Did you take a walk to see a bridge today? Tell me about it.
- Tell me the two types of force you learned about today.
- What is static equilibrium?
Thank you for sharing your spectacular students with us this week! We are having a blast with all our learning and discoveries!
Warmly,
Mrs. Lett