Truss Bridge Creations

Tyler wanted to share his Truss bridge with everyone this week. We have been creating Truss bridges for our end of unit project in science- Building and Testing. Students learn different building techniques (see Mia's post of her Stable Animal) which lead us to build bridges for our Grade 3 Bridge Building Competition.

Tyler's team created this bridge over two week. They first created their bridge deck, then added the trusses and finally the cover. Each bridge must span 30 cm and hold at least 1 kg of weight. We test all the bridges in grade 3 together and the bridge which holds the most wins. We have tons of fun breaking them- I mean testing them!

During the bridge building we also incorporate social studies and math. Students must buy popsicle sticks and rent the glue they are using, through their companies, to construct the bridges. Sometimes the market increases and it costs more, depending on supply and demand. Also, some groups find themselves not having enough money to complete their bridges and must to "The bank" to borrow money and create payment plans.

Kids are having tons of fun and we will test in two weeks when the other grade 3 classes are done. I will post pictures of that as well!

Here is Tyler's Bridge.