What you’ll need:
- Uncooked spaghetti noodles
- Styrofoam circle or other foam shapes
Instructions:
- Experiment with testing the strength of a single spaghetti noodle. How easy does it break? Is it strong enough to hold up to the weight of various things you have around the house?
- Try standing up a few spaghetti noodles by poking them into your foam base. Are a few noodles together strong enough to support the weight of an object?
- Try standing up many more noodles in the foam base. Can they support an object now?
- Use another foam base to rest on top of the noodles. Now try supporting an object’s weight on the upper foam shape. See how many objects you can stack up! Does adding more noodles make your structure stronger?
Why did more noodles help? The weight of the objects was distributed over multiple noodles, instead of just one noodle. The foam layer on top helps adjust for slight differences in the noodle height.
This project was inspired by this STEM challenge for kids. Check it out for another noodle construction challenge using wooden blocks!
Check out other science and math activities from Camp Little Victors: