We began by re-capping on what gravity is and then explored the idea of balancing  a stick on your finger. The balance point is called the centre of gravity because both sides have balanced forces. I asked the children to balance their own stick then offered a stick with blue-tack at one end. Everyone understood that the stick would balance better if the gum was at the bottom/ heavy end. I the challenged everyone to make a structure which is wider at the bottom and as tall as possible.

After 15 minutes we visited everyone’s towers and commented on what was a good strategy and how the towers could be improved. The children then had 5 minutes to make improvements.

Many different strategies eg, overlapping sticks, infill with pine cones / needles, parallel sticks which were larger at the base, tripod arrangement. One boy used mud as a sort of cement!

A very cold day. Another time it would be fun to fair test the structures.