STEM Club - Spaghetti Structures

STEM club

Autumn 2 week 2

The challenge:

The Science behind it:

One piece of spaghetti is not strong but if you use lots of pieces you can build a strong, tall tower. Each piece takes a little of the weight of the tower. The weight is the result of gravity, which pulls everything vertically downwards. That is why it is important to ensure that the tower does not lean too much and that’s also why towers are normally thick at the base and thinner at the top. Electricity pylons, church spires and structures such as the Eiffel Tower are all wider at the bottom than they are at the top to make them stable.

You will need:

Uncooked spaghetti and marshmallows

Instructions:

Start building your structure by pushing a piece of spaghetti deep inside a marshmallow.

Keep adding spaghetti and marshmallows to build a structure (a sheet showing different structures has been attached to help you).

Test your structure’s strength to make sure it does not lean.

Try making structures that have different shapes and see which one is strongest.

Questions

What is height of the tallest tower I can build?

What shapes were the strongest?

What challenges did you have while you were building your tower?

What do you think engineers have to consider when they are building structures?