Critical Load Card Structures

The students started the class with a "round robin" exercise in which they stood up and shared their ideas of how they wanted to build their structures.

Each group, consisting of three to four students, had to draw a plan detailing how they were going to use the index cards to create their structure.

They had to predict how many grams they thought their structure would hold before moving on to the creation phase.

Each of the groups used different techniques to build their structures, taking a picture of it when they were done before they started the testing.

During the testing phase Ms. Koepke gave each group weights to add to their structure.

Some of the groups stacked them on top of one other in the middle of their card structure, while other groups distributed the weights at the edges and slowly moved them in before their card structure collapsed.

When their structures collapsed from the load of the weights, they recorded what their critical load - or the weight that the building could hold - was.

Ms. Koepke explained that engineers do this type of testing all of the time, continually making adjustments so things work and function correctly.

When all of the groups had a chance to test out their critical load, they had the opportunity to changes their structure, making them stronger and testing them again.

The strongest structure that day held 210 grams of weight!