At our June Parent-Daughter Workshop, we talked a lot about the design process and failure. The Summer Edition of our STEM Challenge of the Month will explore these things a little more as you and your daughter take on the Marshmallow Tower Challenge! This is the perfect activity to use up some of those left over marshmallows from your summer camping trips!
You might have seen the Marshmallow Tower Challenge from a TED Talk. While it’s fun to do and you get to test your building skills, it’s also interesting to see how different groups of people approach the challenge with varying degrees of success (hint – kindergartners actually perform better than most adults, including recent business school graduates!). This short video talks about the need for a plan, multiple rounds of building and testing, and how teams work best together.
Background
When faced with a challenge, it can be tempting to jump right in and start designing. But without a solid plan in place, that method often leads to frustration and failure. Scientists and engineers follow what’s called the Design Process when faced with a challenge. At STEM Like a Girl, we teach girls to take the time to follow this process when working on a challenge. For the Marshmallow Tower Challenge, this strategy will help you develop a solid plan, create your initial design, and modify your structure based on your testing. While doing this, you will likely encounter some failure. This can be really frustrating, especially when you work hard on something! But what if you looked at failure as a good thing? Instead of seeing the negative, ask yourself what you can learn from each failed attempt. Take that information and use it to improve your structure!
The Challenge
Build the tallest free-standing structure that can hold the marshmallow on the top. This is a great activity to do as a team so work together to see what you can come up with. For an added challenge, give yourself a time limit (~20 min).
Materials
- 20 pieces of uncooked spaghetti
- 1 yard of string
- 1 yard of tape
- 1 marshmallow
- Measuring tape
- Marshmallow Tower Experiment Test Sheet
Methods
- Download and print the Marshmallow Tower Experiment Test Sheet.
- Take 5 minutes to brainstorm different ideas for your structure and sketch them out.
- Once you have a plan, start building. When you think you have a solid structure, test your marshmallow on top.
- What are your results? Did the tower hold the marshmallow or did it collapse? What can you learn from this attempt to help you build a stronger or taller tower?
- Re-design your structure based on your evaluation.
- Continue testing and redesigning until you are happy with your result. Remember it’s about building the best tower for YOU!
We’d love to see pictures of the Marshmallow Towers you create and hear how tall they were! Email your pictures to info@stemlikeagirl.org to be featured on our website or social media. Or you can tag us on instagram @stemlikeagirl_pdx or use the hashtag #stemlikeagirlchallengeofthemonth
