Tallest Paper Tower Challenge for Grades 6-8
Summary
Overview
Teach your students about the engineering design process with this fun lesson plan. They will design and build the tallest possible tower using nothing but paper and tape, but there's an additional twist on this classic activity. The tower must support a heavy weight at the top without collapsing! Teachers, note that elementary and high school versions of this lesson plan are also available. The 2021 Fluor Engineering Challenge is over, but you can still try out this fun challenge with your students!
Remote learning adaptation: Students can watch the introductory video and follow the instructions on the Student Worksheet to build and test their towers independently at home. If you would like students to work collaboratively, students can share their design ideas and testing results with each other via video conferencing or shared documents and photos iteratively before settling on a final tower to test and submit as their entry.
Learning Objectives
- Design and build a paper tower based on specific criteria.
- Iteratively test and modify the tower to improve its performance.
NGSS Alignment
This lesson helps students prepare for these Next Generation Science Standards Performance Expectations:- MS-ETS1-4. Develop a model to generate data for iterative testing and modification of a proposed object, tool, or process such that an optimal design can be achieved.
| Science & Engineering Practices | Disciplinary Core Ideas | Crosscutting Concepts | |||
| Science & Engineering Practices | Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions.
Undertake a design project, engaging in the design cycle, to construct and/or implement a solution that meets specific design criteria and constraints. |
Disciplinary Core Ideas | ETS1.B: Developing Possible Solutions.
A solution needs to be tested, and then modified on the basis of the test results, in order to improve it. |
Crosscutting Concepts | Structure and Function.
Structures can be designed to serve particular functions by taking into account properties of different materials, and how materials can be shaped and used. |
Materials
If you want to enter your design in the 2021 Fluor Engineering Challenge, you can only use the materials listed below.
- Construction materials
- Paper (maximum 30 sheets). Printer, construction, graph, and notebook paper are allowed (letter or A4 size; 9" x 12" or 22 x 30-cm construction paper also allowed). Cardstock and newspaper are not allowed.
- Tape (maximum one roll), maximum 1" (2.5 cm) wide. Clear office tape (e.g. Scotch®), masking, and painter's tape are allowed. Double-sided tape, duct tape, and packing tape are not allowed.
- Hard, smooth surface, such as table or countertop
- Tools
- Scissors
- Ruler
- Pencil
- Metric tape measure or meterstick
- Stopwatch
- Unopened can of food, 14–16 oz or 400–450 g. Glass jars are not allowed for safety reasons (they could shatter if they fall off your tower).
Background Information for Teachers
This section contains a quick review for teachers of the science and concepts covered in this lesson.Throughout the world, engineers have designed a wide variety of observation towers in different shapes and sizes (Figure 1). Unlike regular buildings and skyscrapers, which typically have rooms (offices, apartments, etc.) on every floor, observation towers may have a mostly "hollow" structure with an observation deck on top. Other similar structures that have a hollow frame with a heavy load at the top include water towers and radio towers (Figure 2). You can download a Towers of the World Slideshow for more pictures.
Figure 1. From left to right: the Space Needle (USA), the Pitampura TV tower (India), the Eiffel Tower (France), and the CN Tower (Canada).
Figure 2. Radio towers (left) and a water tower (right).
This year's Fluor Engineering Challenge is inspired by towers like those in Figures 1 and 2. As shown in the following video, the goal is for students to build the tallest possible tower using only paper and tape, but the tower must also support a can of food at the top.
You can use this project to explore several topics in physics and engineering with your students. For example:
- Beams are long, skinny elements used to make many structures like towers and bridges. Multiple beams can be combined to make trusses. Certain truss shapes can be very strong. Can your students identify any trusses in Figures 1 and 2?
- An object that is being "squished" is in compression and an object that is being pulled on is in tension. Beams can be in either tension or compression, depending on how a tower is designed.
- Sometimes towers include ropes, cables, or chains as part of the design. These parts can only be in tension (think about what happens if you try to "push" a rope), but they can still be useful. For example, the long cables connected to the top of the radio towers in Figure 2 are called guy wires. They are anchored to the ground and prevent the tall, skinny towers from falling over.
- The shape of a beam can dramatically affect its strength. For example, it is very easy to bend a flat piece of paper. It becomes much harder to bend the paper if you fold it in half multiple times or roll it into a tube. This resistance to bending is determined by the beam's cross section. For example, the cross section of a flat piece of paper is a (very thin) rectangle. This rectangle bends very easily in the thin direction. The cross section of a piece of paper rolled into a tube is a circle. An I-beam (where the cross section looks like a capital letter I) is a common shape used in many structures.
You can also use this project to demonstrate the engineering design process. It is unlikely that your students' towers will work perfectly on the first try—they might even collapse! Your students might need to iterate by testing and tweaking their designs multiple times so they can continually improve them. You can use this video to review the steps of the engineering design process with your students.
