STEAM

YEAR 9 AND 10

Over the past few weeks, the Year 9/10 STEAM students have been investigating different bridge types, the origins of old and modern-day bridges and how incorporating a construction/assembly pattern makes the bridge sides and bottom stronger. Students have been following the engineering design process to create a strong and safe model bridge. The challenge was to design a bridge, made primarily out of spaghetti, that could hold the most weight without breaking. Just like real engineers, they had some limits — only using spaghetti, glue and rubber bands, and how to incorporate a truss system to strengthen the bridge structure. Once the bridges were built, students were tasked with coming up with a systematic approach to testing how much weight their bridge could hold before it structurally failed.