4DFrame Activity Tips:
4. Towers
Build the tallest tower that can stand by itself.
KomTek in Järfalla is a Swedish science- and technology-oriented activity centre
that regularly uses 4DFrame materials in its programs both in-house and with local
schools. Anna Nytomt Kristensson is one of their staff who works with this and she
shared this set of activity tips KomTek developed (thank you, Anna!) for using this
educational teaching tool.
4. Towers
Build the tallest tower that can stand by itself.
Main concepts 1-3 technology:
- Materials for your own design work, their properties, and how they can be connected.
Main concepts 4-6 technology:
- How common solid and stable structures are built, such as buildings and bridges.
- The different phases of Technology Development: identification of needs, investigating,
propose solutions, construction and testing.
- Own designs with applications of the principles of solid and stable structures.
- Documentation in the form of sketches with explanatory words and concepts, symbols
and dimensions, as well as physical or digital models.
Preparation:
- Look together at pictures of different towers and talk about how they are built,
but it can also be good to let the students build without having discussed it together
first. They then discover the different problems and come up with their own solutions.
Towers with 4DFrame:
- Give students the task to build a tower as high as possible. The tower should be
able to stand by itself.
Follow-up:
- Talk about stable structures; how does one build for it to become stable?
- View pictures of different towers.
- Talk about trusses, compare a square of 4DFrame and then a square with a diagonal
added to it.
- Have the students feel the difference in the stability between the two 4DFrame
examples. View photos of the Eiffel Tower, the half-timbered houses, cranes.
- Build towers again based on what you have just discussed. Did they become higher
and more stable?
- Make sketches of your tower, photograph and document it.
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