During this series on STEM Skills Challenges, we are focusing on the soft-skills that help make our students well-rounded and, according to local businesses, more employable.
This week's challenge is an individual challenge that will exercise student creativity as well as math skills.
For this challenge, students will work individually to design and construct a paper airplane that will carry the maximum amount of paperclips the farthest distance.
This tricky little challenge will require some thought and planning in working with multiple variables, but will help students to think critically about how to obtain the highest point value.
What a better way to learn than to disguise it as having fun ;) In this challenge, students are challenged to design and build a paper airplane that will travel the farthest carrying the most weight.
Materials Paper- all the same size and type Paperclips Measuring tape (I use one like this)
I usually have students complete this challenge individually because the project is very straight-forward to "build" and very accessible to younger students too. I like this challenge because it is a very easy way to introduce and use the Engineering Design Process.
Once students have designed, built and tested their paperclip airplanes, hold a fly-off with each student throwing their airplane and calculating the amount of points they have earned. Teachers can use any formula, but I am partial to the one below (but tend to change it throughout the day so that students from later class periods don't have an edge).
5d + 2p = total points
(where d=distance rounded to the nearest foot and p= number of paperclips)
As with any challenge that contains a competition portion, I like to work together with students to create the competition rules. For one, it gets them thinking about strategy. Two, it gets them thinking about fairness. Three, it gets them more invested in both the project and the rules (which is of the utmost benefit when students cry foul).
So, what did we learn? Next Generation Science Standards: SEP- , Defining Problems, Analyzing and Interpreting Data; CCC- Patterns, Cause and Effect
CCSS Math: Operations and Algebraic Thinking, Measurement and Data,Expressions and Equations
