week 10: gumdrop structures

It's a classic, but who doesn't love a good old engineering challenge? This one is geared towards a younger audience (ages pre-K to late elementary) but of course, anyone can join!

Materials: 

• Gumdrops
• Toothpicks

Directions:

1. Stick toothpicks into gumdrops to create structures. Try creating simple shapes first, and then expand upon them. For example, a square can be made with 4 toothpicks and 4 gumdrops, with the gumdrops at the corners and the toothpicks connecting them.
2. If you are with a friend, try to compete to see who can build the tallest structure, or the structure that can hold the most weight. You can stack books or other such objects to measure the structure's strength. Which designs seem to work well? Which designs do not work well?

What's Going On?
You may have noticed that some shapes work better than others when trying to create a sturdy gumdrop structure. Triangles are great for this, and you can observe plenty of bridges and other such structures with triangles incorporated into their design! Triangles only have three angles, meaning they only have three points where the toothpicks intersect. This means that each angle will be smaller than say, those of a square. These smaller angles ensure that when a force is applied, the triangle won't lose its shape.