Towers and Bridges

Monday 23rd November

This was the first day of work at the school, after a brief presentation from AirSpace Gallery artists and PiCL. We all got down to doing some quick experiments.

First each class was divided into three groups. These groups were given names based on points of history, these were; Primitive, Egyptian, and Modern.
The task that each group had to complete was to build a basic structure using materials relevant to their particular point in history.

Primitives had

Wood in the form of sticks
Stone in the form of small boulders
Twine

Egyptians had

Wood
Sand stone
Twine
Paper and Cloth

Moderns had

Plastic LEGO
Paper, Card,
Tape, and Glue
and Chicken wire

In the morning we made Towers, these towers had to be between 30 and 40 centimeters high and have a base no larger than 20x20 centimeters, the towers had to be strong enough to support a book. Here are the results:

Can you guess which age they are from?

In the afternoon we did a similar exercise, but instead of towers we were building bridges. The bridges had to go over a gap of 30 centimeters, and be strong enough to support first one small stone, then a larger stone and then both of the stones together. Here are the results:

 

 

It was quite an active day and we had fun building and recording these simple structures, below is an example of the drawing made by the Primitive group of their tower, it was made using a piece of slate and a piece of metal which scratched the surface to produce the image.