Investigating the strongest wall
Second and third class have been busy learning about The Great Wall of China. We built our own walls using cocktail sticks and marshmallows.
First, we designed our own walls in groups. Half of the class used squares and cuboids, while the remainder used triangles and triangular-based pyramids. We thought long and hard and drew our designs.
The next step was building the walls. It was tricky to make our materials balance but we tried it a couple of times and it worked.
We then tested to see what wall was the strongest. We placed a book on top of each wall and observed the results. The cube-cuboid walls fell immediately, however the triangle\triangular-based pyramids remained standing.
We discussed our results in our groups and concluded that the result is caused by the number of sides on the shapes used. The triangle has the strongest centre because it has three sides. A square is weaker because it has four sides. We all agreed that the less sides a shape has, the stronger it will be.
First, we designed our own walls in groups. Half of the class used squares and cuboids, while the remainder used triangles and triangular-based pyramids. We thought long and hard and drew our designs.
The next step was building the walls. It was tricky to make our materials balance but we tried it a couple of times and it worked.
We then tested to see what wall was the strongest. We placed a book on top of each wall and observed the results. The cube-cuboid walls fell immediately, however the triangle\triangular-based pyramids remained standing.
We discussed our results in our groups and concluded that the result is caused by the number of sides on the shapes used. The triangle has the strongest centre because it has three sides. A square is weaker because it has four sides. We all agreed that the less sides a shape has, the stronger it will be.
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