External Forces!

I hope everyone is enjoying the snow and their weekend!

Friday was very busy. Unfortunately, our guest Elder, who was supposed to come to teach us about the First Nations' medicine wheel, had to cancel and will be coming instead in February. Instead, we had our regular library and MakerSpace time, played in the giant snow piles for APQ, practiced our concert songs (they're really coming along!) and finished decorating our door for the contest!

After first break, we discussed some important Secret Santa business and had some time to work on some math questions for the Ecqts, which is now on Tuesday due to the snow day.

For science during the last 2 periods, we were lucky enough to have Alex come in and teach us about external forces on structures! We discussed torsion, tension, bending, and compression. Then we got to investigate these forces in a hands-on way by building paper and tape bridges. However, students couldn't just use whatever materials they wished, as they had to "purchase" the things they needed with their small amount of money. Several teams' bridges held all the weight, and even the ones that didn't were still great because everyone learned something from the experience. Here are some pictures of the testing: