Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

SCIENCE FAIR QUESTION: I have a student whose experiment is : how much weight can two by six lego joints hold? He plans to build a structure out of legos and then keep adding weight to see when it breaks. Is this a valid science fair experiment? I can't seem to put my finger on it but something seems to be "off" or missing...TIA how can we adjust this so that the student can still do this project?

Hi amyplumlee,

The experiment you've described could be the basis for a science fair project. But it needs a hypothesis and an independent variable. That is, what would your student alter about the Lego structure to change the weight the structure will support?

You might want to take a look at the following projects that involve building and testing Lego structures. These projects may inspire some ideas about improving the design of your student's experiment. Or your student may want to pursue one of these projects instead.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... es#summary

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... er#summary

I hope this helps. Please ask again if you have more questions.

A. Norman

Thank you so much. That's the direction I was headed but this is our first science fair so I wanted to be sure. Thanks for your quick response!