Tying up loose ends.
Monday, June 6, 2011 at 12:34PM Just two quick loose ends to tie up today. First, way back at the start of the year, I talked about the boys' decisions to not participate in spring soccer this year. If you'll remember, Micah's only concern was with the end of the season party. He didn't care about the soccer but definitely wanted the cupcakes. I thought it was a fair trade. ;) So, yesterday (as the spring soccer tournament wrapped up and we appreciated *not* being there), we bought cupcakes. (We let Micah pick them out...)
;)
Yup, *totally* worth a few months without 5-6 practices and 3 games each week. ;)
The other loose end isn't quite so long in the making. We tested the boys' toothpick bridges yesterday afternoon (between cupcakes, lol). Here are the bridges before the testing:
;)
As you can see, Asher went for simplicity (he had a much more elaborate sketch to start with but opted for a more straight-forward design when faced with actually constructing it, lol). Micah's bridge is his own "M" design, and Noah's, obviously, involved a bit more thought (and still managed to incorporate some "N"s after seeing Micah's plan). :) (Noah and Micah added foam "roadbeds" just for fun.)
We then proceeded to weigh each bridge and test its strength with our homemade testing apparatus:
;)
As we applied more weight, the bridges twisted and sagged and ultimately failed. Noah's bridge proved strongest, as it held 65.2 pounds before giving out. We started out with a large water container...filled it with water...and then had to start adding weight in whatever way we could figure. We hadn't really anticipated that the bridges would hold that much. :) (Yes, we realize there are some aspects of our testing which may have compromised exact results, but we decided that since we used the same process for all three bridges...and since this was just for us...it was good enough, lol.)
After the fact, Noah figured out the efficiency of each bridge's design by doing math involving the mass of the structure and the mass carried. And now they're all planning their next designs... ;)
So. That was it. I'll start my curriculum reviews tomorrow. Really. ;)
Reader Comments (1)
WOW! I must say I am impressed. The inner physicist in me is pretty amazed that a toothpick bridge could hold more than 65 pounds! I would not have thought that my almost 5 year old could hold on to it and hang there.... She's only 46 lbs! Good job Noah!!!!!