Year 6 build towers from just 6 sheets of paper

On Friday 15th November, 2002, Year 6 were set a sky scraping challenge in their design and technology lesson.

The task required them to build a structure using just six sheets of A4 paper and a metre of sticky tape. The structure also had to support a cricket ball at a minimum height of 10 cm. There were two objectives for the task:
1. To build the tallest tower
2. To make the tower stable so that it would withstand the desk being shaken.

The children quickly realised that a compromise would need to be reached, as making the tower too tall would effect it's stability. 

There were many ingenious designs that explored methods of adding strength to paper. The tallest tower to support the cricket ball was a staggering 92 cm tall.

The class had a lot of fun, but more importantly learnt a great deal about strength and structures.

Click on the pictures below to enlarge them