Course: Bridges: To Get to the Other Side - Elementary

Designing an Earthquake-Resistant Bridge

Now that you have finished the activities in this course, it's time to share your learning. Your team will design, build and test a bridge made completely out of PASTA (and some glue). Document your trial and errors throughout the experiment using a flip camera. When you are finished, link your movie on the Final Projects forum.

Challenge:
The bridge over Foamy Falls collapsed during a flood. Now, the town of Penneville needs a
new bridge. To buy the best bridge for the money, the Town Council interviews several civil
engineering companies. Each engineering team must prepare a detailed list of the materials
used, a budget, a set of design plans, and a model of the bridge.

The Town council states that the winning design must be safe and inexpensive.

Safety requirement: The model bridge must span between 40 - 50 centimeters long. The bridge must support a baseball, and the ball must be able to travel across the bridge from end to end without getting stuck in the center. We will do the final test by attaching a bucket to the bridge and seeing how many coins we can add to it (up to 30 coins).

Directions:
To get started, watch these two videos. Jot down ideas and share them with your group about what you think would work best in your pasta bridge design.