We started by looking at a picture and attempting to find out how many structures we could notice. We also circled them with green if they were stable or strong and red if they were not (unfortunately, these do not show up on the picture):
There was a bit of a debate in class regarding the man and his son and whether he was a structure or not. By looking at the other examples, we realized as a class that a structure is anything that can support something else (which we call a "load") - therefore, the man acts as a structure for his child!
Students were then given a challenge - using 20 spaghetti sticks, a metre of tape, and a handful of mini marshmallows, they were to work with a partner to make the highest structure they could. We'll be completing this at the start and the end of the unit to see if we can make a better design!
A lot of students noticed the triangles in the above picture and came up with their own designs that used triangles. Here are some of their designs:
