Engineers are important because they help us to solve problems. Did you know there are electrical engineers, chemical engineers, computer engineers, industrial engineers, mechanical engineers, and civil engineers? These engineers are different from train engineers who drive trains. Engineers design our homes, our cities, and most of the things we use day-to-day.You can be an engineer too! Can you design a bridge with just index/file cards that can hold a load of pennies?
What to do:
Go to the Exploratorium: File Card Bridges Experiment to build and design bridges to hold pennies!
Make sure to print and record your results on your Mission Report! For this report, it would be very helpful to have drawings of how you set up your bridges as well as how many pennies it can hold. If you have a digital camera, you could take pictures too! It is important to have a record of what you have tried and what happened. It is often just as important to know what does not work as it is to know what works.
If you want to explore more about bridges, go to Building Big: Bridges from PBS.
If you want to find out more about what engineers do, please check out one of the videos below. Pick the one for your grade level.
What to do:
Go to the Exploratorium: File Card Bridges Experiment to build and design bridges to hold pennies!
Make sure to print and record your results on your Mission Report! For this report, it would be very helpful to have drawings of how you set up your bridges as well as how many pennies it can hold. If you have a digital camera, you could take pictures too! It is important to have a record of what you have tried and what happened. It is often just as important to know what does not work as it is to know what works.
If you want to explore more about bridges, go to Building Big: Bridges from PBS.
If you want to find out more about what engineers do, please check out one of the videos below. Pick the one for your grade level.
Grades PK-1
Grades 2-4