Building Bridges

combine materials that when put together can do things that they cannot do by themselves such as building a tower or a bridge and justify the selection of those materials based on their physical properties.[2.5D]

· Students should be given a variety of objects that they can use to build a structure with and then explain why they constructed it in the way that they did

· Allow students to talk about other pieces (shape, size, etc.) that would have been helpful to have and explain why

· Talk about any extra pieces that were not needed

· What are the physical properties of the unused pieces

· The pieces of a flashlight (battery, bulb, container, spring, etc) can be used as a demonstration

· The parts of a mechanical pencil or pen can be used as a demonstration

NOTE: This applies to anything that is a mixture of other things

Including: 

• Physical properties of materials that help them do new things when combined to create something else 

•Examples of systems / objects that are combination of items that do not function the same as if they were separated: 

   Brick walls without mortar 

 Lemonade without sugar 

 Cake without flour 

  Swings without the seat portion 

 The kids had soooo much fun with this! First they planned their bridge on paper. Some of them had great ideas to start with, others had even better ideas after I simply showed a Google image search page of bridges.  It was so much fun to walk around the room and hear their reasoning! DOK 3 Baby! Go scientists, go! They were given several choices for materials & some even asked for additional supplies. They had to build a bridge that would support a toy car. Most of them made amendments to their original design.