Marshmallow Towers
About
Marshmallow Towers was the very first experiment we did at the Boys and Girls Club! With Marshmallow towers we hoped to learn the skills of teamwork and collaboration and the science behind shapes, structure, and architecture. We did this by dividing up into teams of 3-5 people per team and competed to make the tallest free-standing tower, using the supplies of spaghetti sticks, tape, string, and scissors, that can hold the weight of one regular marshmallow.
How to:
Divide yourselves into groups with equal numbers of people per group. Gather your supplies to make sure each group has the materials listed above. Set a timer for 20-30 minutes (you can decide based on how challenging you would like this project to be).
Before you start, brainstorm for 10 minutes on some ways you can approach building the structure. Some of the kids knew they wanted to use triangles throughout their projects because it's the strongest shape. They also knew they wanted to start off by building a strong base to have a stable foundation. They also thought of some of the restrictions they had while building this tower, like how gravity will push the tower down if it's too heavy at the top, etc.
After the 20-30 minutes is up, measure each free-standing tower that is holding a marshmallow and measure from the base of the tower to the marshmallow.
Materials
- Pasta
- Lasagna
- Penne
- Wheel Pasta
- Spaghetti
- Macaroni
- Glue (glue gun)
- Markers (to decorate)
- Ramp (to run pasta mobile on)
How To:
Before beginning this project, it is highly recommended that you have some ideas on how you want to approach your design, so you don't go into it blindly.
Above, is a basic design of a pasta mobile.
To build this, first take a piece of the Lasagna pasta.
Then take two pieces of penne pasta and glue them on opposite ends of the lasagna. Next, take a few pieces of spaghetti and stick them through the penne. These will as a the axis the wheels will rotate on. It is also best to break the spaghetti sticks in half because if too long, the sticks will likely break.
Then put some glue about two inches in from the open end of the spaghetti stick and wait until it dries.
Insert your pasta wheels on the open end, and put glue on the other side of the wheel on the spaghetti stick.
To turn this into a competition, you can find a ramp, roll each mobile down the ramp, and measure how far it goes. The person with the farthest distance wins!
paper balloon Airplanes
About
With our third project, the kids got more comfortable with idea of the scientific method. They came up with a theory and hypothesis of how they wanted to go about building their airplane, i.e. which design they wanted to do, and then they did some trial and error to figure out which design they liked best. Once they got their main design for the paper airplane, they attached a balloon to it to give it some more lift and speed. Although, we learned that sometimes the addition of the balloon didn't help if placed improperly.
How to:
First you can start by choosing a paper plane design. You can do trial and error by seeing which air plane design works best/which airplane you can create the best. Take a look at the picture on the left to see some options of what paper planes designs you could use. Then, once finished, attach a piece of tape, making sure that you can attach something to the other side of the tape, on the paper plane. Lastly, blow up your balloon and attach it to the tape, making sure you don't have the open end of the balloon tied but pinch it with your fingers to make sure it's still inflated.
Once everyone's ready, it's competition time! Make sure you have a stop watch handy. Have each individual take their balloon paper plane and once they're ready, have one person let the balloon paper plane go and time it to see how long it can stay in the air. Whoever's stays in the air the longest, wins!
About
Popsicle Catapults is a project that combines the sciences of gravity and air resistance with engineering and actually building a catapult. The simplicity of this type of catapult allows the inventors to really see how every small detail in a catapult works. The end goal is to create a catapult that can launch the given object, which can be a marshmallow, a ping pong ball, an eraser, etc, the farthest!
How To:
This is an individual project so make sure each one of you has your 1 spoon, 7 sticks, and 5 rubber bands.
First, take 5 of your 7 sticks and line stack them all up. Then take one of your rubber bands and tie them around one end of the stack of sticks. Take another rubber band in do the same thing to the other end of the stack of sticks: tie them around the stack (tightly!). Take the 6th popsicle stick as well as 2 rubber bands and tie the stem of the spoon to the popsicle stick (tightly!). Then tie the bottom end of the spoon-tied-popsicle stick to the last remaining popsicle stick. Lastly, place the original stack of 5 popsicle sticks in between the the other 2 popsicle sticks as shown in the picture, and you are ready for launch!
You can adjust your catapult by adding more or less popsicle sticks in the center stack of sticks as well.
Compete with your friends by placing the catapult in a designated area, placing, your item on the spoon, pulling the spoon back, and launching it to see how far it goes!
