Build a house strong enough to hold Santa’s sleigh!
If each gift weighs 1 kg, with an estimated total child population of 2.2 billion, Santa’s cargo would weigh about 2.2 billion kilos…and that is equivalent to 55,000 Esplora Planetariums! That is a very heavy sleigh!
The challenge of this festive STEM activity is for participants to design and create a house or building strong enough to hold up the combined weight of Santa’s sleigh and his presents. As you’re designing and building your house or apartment building, experiment with different geometric shapes to see how the shape of a material affects its strength.
Your structure doesn’t need to look like an actual house or building. Be creative as you want. We ended up making structures that looked more like pyramids that anything else! This open-ended Christmas challenge is great for people who love to design, make and test new inventions! Are you up for the challenge?
Get your materials ready!
We’re using straws which we had bought a couple of years back. If you do not have any straws available, we encourage you to either buy paper straws, kebab sticks or else use thin wooden popsicle sticks to reduce plastic waste.
We used stones since they’re quite easy to find and can be quite heavy.
We encourage the use of masking tape instead of regular transparent tape as it makes it easier to disassemble the house if you want to reuse the materials for another project.
Try it out!
Follow the design process to build your house!
Step 1: Define the problem
Define the problem, which in this case is that the house/building needs to be strong enough to hold quite a bit of weight. We can’t have damaged ceilings every time Santa comes to deliver presents right?
Step 2: Collect information
Research & collect information which will help you design the best possible building.
Why is this step important? As we’ve already mentioned, the strength of materials is greatly affected by their structure and characteristics. Research what kind of buildings have been standing for years (take the great pyramids for example!), or which shapes and materials they use when building houses and when building larger structures such as skyscrapers and bridges.
Triangles are great shapes to use to strengthen the structure of your house since they can help to spread out the forces evenly rather than focusing them on one single spot – in fact, triangles are considered as one of the strongest shapes you could have. Keep an eye out when you’re outside and notice how often the triangle is used in all sorts of building structures and trusses.
You can ask questions such as:
A simple activity to reinforce the idea that shapes affect the strength of a material is by using a piece of paper. You can build a strong bridge just by changing the shape of a piece of paper. This link will take you to more detailed instructions on how you can carry out this optional activity: http://esplora.org.mt/engineer-it/
Step 3: Brainstorm ideas
Brainstorm ideas & design your building on a piece of paper. Use buildings that you found during the research step of the process to inspire your design and make sure to look closely at their structure.
By planning and designing your building before you build it, you can see from beforehand which materials and how much of them you will need to use to bring your design to life.
Be as creative as you want! Don’t limit yourself to traditional buildings and structures.
Step 4 : Develop a solution
Build the house using the materials we recommended and other materials which you have chosen to use.
Step 5: Present your ideas for feedback
Test it out. Place the wrapped gifts in your make-shift sleigh and place it on your house. Observe your building:
Step 6: Improve your design
How much weight did you manage to place on your house? Use the kitchen or bathroom scales to weigh your sleigh and presents to find out!
Can you create a bigger and stronger building?
Share your structure with us on social media
by tagging us on social media @esploramalta #esploramalta #getcuriousgetinspired
Take it further!
You can take this activity a step further by building several copies of the same house, but use different materials for the different houses to see whether you notice any differences.
Show us what you’ve made! Take a photo of at least 4 of your favourite activities from Esplora’s Science Advent Calendar. Trust us, you’ll need them later!
