STEM Club Engineering Challenge

Posted on January 19, 2017

Last week in STEM Club we took advantage of the beautiful weather and went outside for an engineering challenge. Our materials involved 20 pieces of spaghetti, 20 small marshmallows, three feet of tape and three feet of string. Our constraint was that each structural base must remain on the ground. Our challenge was to see which team could build the highest structure!

The marshmallow engineering challenge was fiercely competitive and showed great ingenuity and teamwork. Our 2-8 th grade members did great work and although we had some tall, unstable towers suspended to the basketball hoops (very clever!), our winner was David Doan in 7 th grade with a structurally sound tower.

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

We mixed it up a little for our K-1 st members and introduced 1 large marshmallow per team and toothpicks, as well as the spaghetti and mini marshmallows from above. The younger STEM members did an amazing job; one group of Kindergarten boys built a tower almost 3 feet tall! There was also an incredible amount of creativity and beauty with starburst designs, modern art sculptures and one that with a little bit of instability in the base, would “walk” along the asphalt when the wind blew.