Building Bridges

Our challenge today was to build a bridge!  We worked in groups of three and firstly we had to choose a company name.  The A team, Superb Moshi Monster Company, Let's build!, Fantastic Vets, Big Super Chair and Smart Thinkers all got down to work.

Firstly we looked at pictures of bridges on the internet, then we set to work and planned our designs.  Each company only had £1 to spend and we could buy sheets of paper for 10p and paperclips for 3p and we couldn't go over budget!  We kept a running total on the whiteboard as we bought items.

We had a time limit of 30 minutes but ended up taking a little more time to get them all finished.
Here we are working on our designs:

Some ideas worked better than others - we had to be sure to keep enough money in case we needed extra paper and paperclips!

Our bridges had to span 40cm and take the weight of a toy car.  Here we are testing it out.

Most of our bridges managed to span 40cm and take the weight of a toy car.

We found out that triangle shapes are stronger than squares.

The Fantastic Vets even tried to make a tunnel bridge!  We all had a great time trying out our designs.  Everyone managed to stay within the budget and the winning company with the strongest bridge was Smart Thinkers with The A team and Build It! close behind.

We started to write a report on our bridge building using time connectives and will finish them off tomorrow.