The Brown Bag STEM Challenge II- Marble Madness

Students are used to challenges that ask them to do something the fastest, but how about the slowest?  In this scenario, students are challenged to create a marble run where the marble that reaches the end in the slowest time wins.

Materials
Marbles
Bathroom Cups (3 oz)
Sentence Strips
Foam Board (20x30)
Tape
Other Found Objects

This challenge is a great way to get kids thinking more deeply because the challenge is to complete the course the slowest.  Each team must create a course for their marble using piece of 20 x 30 foam board.  Students can use any found items that you provide, but I like to make sure to include sentence strips because they are thicker than regular paper and can easily be folded into marble tracks. I also like to provide some fun items like bathroom cups, cotton balls, cardboard tubes and paperclips to make creating the course more fun.

So, what did we learn? 
Next Generation Science Standards: Asking Questions and Defining Problems, Developing and Using Models, Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions; CCC- Patterns, Cause and Effect, Scale, Proportion and Quantity

CCSS Math: Measurement and Data, Geometry, Ratios & Proportional Relationships