Tinkering Towers

Time: 15 minutes

What you need:

• Solo cups

• Cans

• Cards

• Toothpicks

• Paper

• Pencil

• Hair dryer

• Tape measure

What you do:

1. Plan the design of what your tower will look like on a piece of paper. 

2. Using your different materials, start building your tower, seeing how high you can make it. 

3. Once you finish building your tower, use your tape measure to see how tall it is. 

4. Now, it’s time to test your tower. First, place your hand on top of it and see what happens. 

5. If it withstood the pressure of your hand, grab your hair dryer and see if your tower can withstand the torsion force from the hair dryer.

6. If your tower falls down, take what you learned and see how you can create a new and improved tower.

Questions to ask:

1. Do you think the base of your tower should be wider or narrower?

2. Think about other objects you see that are really tall. What do they have in common?

3. What can you do to improve your tower?

What's the science:

When engineers design a structure, they have to think about more than just how it looks. They need to make sure that it can withstand the forces acting on it every day. 

Gravity is constantly pulling a tower toward the center of the Earth, so engineers have to consider how the weight of a structure is distributed. Compression occurs when weight presses down on a structure, such as the weight of the building itself, people, furniture or vehicles. Torsion is a twisting force that can occur when wind or uneven weight causes a structure to twist. 

A strong tower needs to be designed to handle these forces without collapsing. That’s why engineers carefully choose materials, connections, shapes and the placement of weight when designing towers, buildings and bridges.