Wooden Tower Contest
CTE Competencies met during this project:
1. Demonstrate positive work ethic.
3. Demonstrate Teamwork Skills
7. Demonstrate creativity and resourcefulness.
10. Demonstrate critical-thinking and problem-solving skills.
11. Demonstrate healthy behaviors and safety skills.
15. Demonstrate time-, task-, and resource-management skills.
16. Demonstrate job-specific mathematics skills.
18. Demonstrate proficiency with technologies common to a specific occupation.
21. Demonstrate telecommunications skills.
31. Analyze a specific product/process/system, using the Universal Systems Model.
44. Design a construction system to solve a problem.
46. Analyze the cause of a failure or a problem in a technological system.
Objective:
To design and construct the most efficient 4-sided tower possible that holds 20+ textbooks. Efficiency will be calculated by weight held ÷ weight of the tower.
Tower Requirements
Width Your tower must not be wider than 5 inches at any given span. Remember, if you make all sides 5 inches, when you glue them together, two sides will be greater than 5 inches in width.
Height Your tower must be between 5 and 7 inches tall.
Your tower must have 4 sides, and only 4 sides. Your sides must be identical. You must make a top sturdy enough to hold a text book.
You will only use wood glue to put this tower together.
You may not have solid walls. Your fingers must be able to fit through the sides of your tower. There will be no solid base or top to your tower.
Steps in construction:
1. Draw 3 thumbnail sketches of the side of your tower.
2. On a blank piece of paper, draw a full scale drawing of your tower and show to Mr. Cornwell before he will give you wood.
Quality construction is key! Examples of butt(end) joints, miter joints, lap joints, notched joints, and gussets below.
Examples of tower designs. Symmetry is KEY!