We discovered a new challenge blog and tried out their current Think! challenge. They give you a list of materials and then a task to perform with them.
Materials: 1 bag of marshmallows; 2 paper cups; 10 paperclips; 5 sticks of spaghetti; 1 inch of tape; 10 inches of string
Challenge: “Suspend” as many marshmallows as possible at least 1 inch above the table.
Jaylene suspended 54 marshmellows! The flowers might be a bit smaller than what other participants were using, but they were the only kind they had in the store.
She looks a bit groggy in this picture because she stayed up a little later than usual to finish the project, and then got up early so that we could take a picture with some sunlight.
Originally she poked holes in the top of the cup with the paper clips and was spearing the marshmellows on the spaghetti, but we thought that might not fit the suspension requirement so she switched to dangling the paperclips off the spaghetti. She didn’t even use the tape or the string. She thought the string was too short to be useful so dismissed it altogether. It was interesting for me to observe her thought process during her creation.
We’re looking forward to next week’s challenge.
5 comments
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October 1, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Heather T.
Wow, what a terrific experiment!! I wonder if that stuff is too hard for Allen, still…
October 2, 2008 at 2:39 am
Helena
That’s quite elaborate!
October 2, 2008 at 3:14 am
Suzerella
Looks like fun!
October 2, 2008 at 10:12 am
Becky
I love it. I need to check out the site. I’m always looking for challenges to do with one class that is longer than the others. With a time limit, it could be quite challenging.
I also like the flower marshmallows!
October 3, 2008 at 9:09 am
Christie
Very Cool. I read about the website also but haven’t had the chance to try it yet. We have company in town. I didn’t even get to post about our fruit project. We paper mache’d it.
(Did I spell that right?) Looks like she did a great job!