DIY Spaghetti Towers

"Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow." -Plato

Have fun with this engineering project that can even be tweaked and adjusted for your liking. Experiment the design process of thinking, planing, doing, modifying, and repeating. This structural challenge will be lots of fun, can be made into a challenge as well, and perhaps include a time constraint.

Materials:

• 20-30 sticks of dry spaghetti

• one yard of tape or 20-30 marshmallow

Instructions:

Challenge: to build the tallest tower possible in 18 minutes(time is adjustable).

1. Set up the supplies for the teams(around 3-4 people) that are playing.

2. Explain the challenge. You can even modify it and make it more challenging by giving teams limited amount of materials or letting them know that their tower needs to carry a marshmallow.

3. Set the timer for the duration of the challenge.

4. Let the challenge begin!

Learning Behind It:

• Students will learn how to go through the steps of the design process:

Define the problem.

Collect information and brainstorm.

Develop solutions.

Learn from results.

Improve.

• They will learn the importance of each of these steps and collaboration to complete challenges efficiently and well.