During the last lesson of Topic, we learnt that the cylinder was the strongest 3D shape because it doesn’t have any corners. We laid books on top of a paper cylinder and counted 12 books before it collapsed. We had such a fun filled afternoon this afternoon experimenting further with the strength of the cylinder shape.
Everyone made their own cylinders using paper and masking tape. The children displayed such awesome team work and everybody was so willing to help one another. It was lovely!
Once all our cylinders were made, we taped all of our groups cylinders together to find out whether adding more cylinders weakens the structure or strengthens it. We laid books on top of our super-structures and counted to see whether they could hold more or fewer books than one single cylinder. We found that amazingly, our super-structures weren’t just a little bit stronger… they were MUCH stronger!
After that, we went one step further still – we used the super-structures we had made and created a super-duper structure by taping all of them together. It was buzzing in the classroom! Everyone was so excited that we were going to try and see if the super-duper structure would hold the weight of a person! We had a brave volunteer who stepped up. We could hardly believe it – the super-duper structure worked!!!
Help at home: Why don’t you try the experiment at home? You could tape paper cylinders together to find out how many you need to hold the weight of different members of the family.