Appendix C: Daily Question Ideas and Extension Ideas
Daily Question Ideas:
How high can a stone building be built?
At what point will the weight of a building crush the lower stones?
How much cable is in the Golden Gate Bridge?
How much does steel cost and what would the steel cost to build the Washington Bridge in today's dollars?
What load was your chair designed for? What directional loads was it designed for? Why does your teacher tell you to stop tipping back on the chair and what does this have to do with forces?
Extension Ideas:
- Incorporate careers in bridge building through having students read about them. Have students introduce themselves and explain their lines of work via role-play.
- Biomiocry, 'analogical recruiting', appropriation of forms from nature, and Calatrava.
- Venn Diagrams to compare and contrast properties of materials
- Explore interactive on line computer programs. Try PBS. Kids, search for other sites, incorporate computer softwares, and The Geometer's Sketchpad.
- Incorporate Euler's explanation to the Koningsberg Bridge puzzle and have students create towns with bridges and their network solutions.
- Building of Oakland Bay Bridge, (DVD) , and other films on Bridges (Building Big Series)
- Read The Great Bridge-Building Contest, by Bo Zaunders
- Take field Trips to local bridges
- Study bridge failures
- Newton's 3 Laws of Motion in relationship to bridges
- Moving bridges
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