Towers and Structures

During our Inventions Unit, we will be learning about structures, bridges, gears, and other man made inventions. This post was created to provide additional resources on towers.  Are you ready?  Here we go...

• Science Olympiad Wiki
• Newspaper Tower Activity

Here are some experiment videos from Zoom:

1. Columns: Finding the Strongest Shape 
2. Columns: Experimenting with Cups

Tower Basics

In order to stay up, towers have to compete with a couple different forces.  Here is what PBS says about the forces working against towers:  "Gravity and the dead load of the tower push down, the ground pushes back up, and small air movements push from the side. A foundation distributes the load into the surrounding ground material and can help balance the sideways wind force. The size of the foundation depends on the strength of the supporting ground. A foundation placed in rock can be smaller than a foundation placed in sand or mud."  So, we are working against the wind, the tower's weight, and the tower's foundation.

Tower Videos

Watch following video on constructing various towers and tall structures. The first two videos are on the Eiffel Tower from the History Channel. 



 

The next video is on the Statue of Liberty and the information on the structure.



This is a video on the Twin Towers from the History Channel.

Tower Task

1. Learn about towers and structures
2. Design your tower with partners
• Why are you building this way?
• What do you have to consider when building the tower?
• How can you build a tall but sturdy tower?
3. Collect the materials:
• Cup, Marshmellows, Toothpicks, and Plate
4. Build you tower
5. Test your towers design
• Make changes to make your tower better as you find weak areas