Paper Tower Building Lab 1
Paper Tower Building Lab
Mrs. B-Z
Assemble a team of classmates so that you have 3-4 teammates. Assign a
role to each teammate and enter his or her name on the corresponding line
below. If you have less than 4 on your team, put someone’s name down for
two tasks.
1. Design Drafter (draws the designs) _____________________________
2. Constructor (puts the tower together) ____________________________
3. Paper roller (rolls paper and tapes it) ____________________________
4. Data collector (measures all items) ______________________________
THE GOAL:
Using only newspaper and tape, you are to construct the tallest tower you can.
Creation:
1. How do you want to construct your tower?
a) How many pieces of newspaper do you think you will need? ___________
b) How can you get that much newspaper? _________________________
c) You may only put one 10-cm piece of tape on the newspaper and one 10cm piece at the end of each piece to fasten it to the tower.
d) How wide do think your tower will need to be? _____________________
e) How tall do you think your tower could be? ________________________
f) What would cause (think in terms of Newton’s first law) the tower to fall
over? ____________________________________________________
g) Draw three designs of your tower. Be sure that each design has
dimensions including metric units for length, width, and height. Incomplete
drawings will cause your group to get behind and possibly lose points.
Take time to do it right the first time.
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Paper Tower Building Lab 2
Design 1:
What we like about this design? (list at least 3 things using complete sentences)
1.
2.
3.
What we think may cause this design to fall and how we can improve on it (list at
least 3 things)
Suggested improvement: ____________________________________________
Suggested improvement: ____________________________________________
Suggested improvement ____________________________________________
Is this the design you plan to build? Circle YES or NO Teacher’s initials ______
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Paper Tower Building Lab 3
Design 2:
What we like about this design? (list at least 3 things using complete sentences)
1.
2.
3.
What we think may cause this design to fall and how we can improve on it (list at
least 3 things)
Suggested improvement: ____________________________________________
Suggested improvement: ____________________________________________
Suggested improvement ____________________________________________
Is this the design you plan to build? Circle YES or NO Teacher’s initials ______
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Paper Tower Building Lab 4
Design 3:
What we like about this design? (list at least 3 things using complete sentences)
1.
2.
3.
What we think may cause this design to fall and how we can improve on it (list at
least 3 things)
Suggested improvement: ____________________________________________
Suggested improvement: ____________________________________________
Suggested improvement ____________________________________________
Is this the design you plan to build? Circle YES or NO Teacher’s initials ______
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Paper Tower Building Lab 5
STEP 2: Construction
Although there is one person listed as the constructor, this task cannot be done
by one person alone. The constructor must put the pieces of paper that have
been rolled by the paper roller together according to the designer’s plans. While
this is being assembled, the data collector must be constantly measuring each
piece of paper and the overall height, length, and width.
Drawing of final product (metric measurements must be on this drawing
according to what the data collector measured—don’t forget SIG FIGS!)
What was the biggest challenge in creating your tower? ____________________
How are Newton’s laws applied to your tower? ___________________________
If you had to create another tower, what would you do differently? ____________
Were the forces on your tower balanced or unbalanced? __________________
How can you tell if they were balanced or not? __________________________
________________________________________________________________
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