Junk drawer robots

Audrey built a robot called Jewels. She used jewels, and Play-Doh for the construction material. Then she built a KangaRapsor out of Play-Doh.



Mary's robot is called the All-Purpose-a-Tron 3000. You can use it to magnify stuff, and it has a compass, and a tape roll (just to balance the magnifying glass), it has a night light that's not taped on (for easy removal), and a head made out of a fairy doll. The head is stuck inside the body, which is made of a magazine. The legs are inside the body. She did a lot of work to get everything to stand up. Her construction material is Scotch tape, and she was wishing she had used duct tape.

Bridge building challenge

This week's Think! challenge was to build a bridge using 2 sheets of paper, 6 sticks of spaghetti, 2 spoons, 2 cups for supports, and 15 inches of tape. The bridge was supposed to span 9 inches and hold as many pennies as possible.

Audrey's design used only the cups and tape. It didn't quite span 9 inches, but it held 69 cents.



Mary used the spaghetti inside a folded piece of paper, and used the tape to keep the paper shut and to hold the bridge onto the supports. Stacking pennies on top was like playing "Don't Spill The Beans" so we had to build another contraption to test the bridge. It held 150 pennies before the supports collapsed.

Marshmallow challenge

This week's challenge from Think! had us trying to suspend as many marshmallows as possible at least an inch above the table. We suspended 10, because that's all that were left in the bag after the "experimentation" phase of the project. I hope next week's challenge doesn't involve marshmallows!

Apple Challenge

I found a new blog, Think! which posts weekly contraption building challenges. This week's was to:

Put the following items on the table:
3 drinking straws
6 toothpicks
3 large marshmallows (if you don't have any use 3 bandaids)
3 round plastic tops (size doesn't really matter -- we used the tops to bottled water)
18 lifesavers (or cherrios or fruit loops)
small apple

Tell students to raise the apple off the ground as high as possible for as long as possible. This time, they may use scissors during "construction" but may not use them to elevate the apple. Remember, the focus is the thinking part so if you don't have the exact materials, don't worry about it, just go with what you have. It is supposed to be fun and require no planning!

Mary's first design went for stability rather than height. We didn't time it because it looked like the apple would stay there forever, or at least until the marshmallows compressed enough.



Her second design held the apple about 2 inches off the table for 1:34.



Audrey enjoyed making contraptions with marshmallows and toothpicks, too. This one is a pufferfish. It's the only one of hers that doesn't have bites taken out of it.