Sep 16th, 2021 — Elementary Science • Physical Science

Junior Engineering at Home with the Building Better Bridges Kit

Due to COVID, my wife is currently homeschooling our daughters. This last week, Eleanor (my 3rd grader) had a lesson on bridges. This was an activity related to the following NGSS standard:

3-PS2-1. Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence of the effects of balanced and unbalanced forces on the motion of an object.

Well, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to use the Building Better Bridges Kit with her!

 

She was quite excited when I brought home the set! We started with a very basic beam bridge to show its weaknesses (the flexible beams work great for this).
From there we expanded upon the bridge by making some triangles.
One thing that was very instructive was having her apply a load to the bridge at different points during the construction process, so she could see how the bridge flexes when beams are missing.

After applying a load, I would ask her if she had to “push” or “pull” between two points to stabilize the bridge. This was to help her understand which beams were under tension versus compression (though I didn’t use those terms with her). I kept the focus on qualitative concepts during this activity, so I didn’t use the Wireless Load Cell. I’d probably introduce measurements with the Load Cell if we had more time for further investigation.

She was a very happy camper after she completed her bridge and tested it under the same loads (not so much sagging now!):

Working with her inspired some additional ideas for activities. I’ve got the ideas logged for now, but hopefully I can add these to the current set someday. Though I originally created the labs with a high school focus, this activity has me excited about applications in the elementary or middle school space. There’s so much potential with these kits, and kids love them!

- Jonathan