LED Bugs and Spaghetti Towers?

Learning can take place at any time and some of the best lessons come from hands-on activities.

Middle School students at St. Louis had the opportunity to engage in the 4 C's of STEM after finishing a section of their standardized tests. The students used creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking to design and build free-standing towers using just uncooked spaghetti and marshmallows. After testing the results and determining successful designs, we moved on to building LED bugs from egg cartons, pipe cleaners, coin batteries and light-emitting diode (LED) lights.

The students had no written instructions for this activity, just their native engineering and problem-solving abilities. Take a look at the results. To learn more about the Spaghetti Tower Challenge visit: http://www.tomwujec.com/design-projects/marshmallow-challenge/