| | | | |

Paper Bridge: Easy Engineering Experiment!

This post may contain affiliate links.

With STEM education being all the rage these days, you should try out this paper bridge. It’s an easy engineering experiment with your kids. This is a quick project to teach about engineering and the strength of different types of materials when you change the shape of them. Add it to your STEM lesson today!

Easy Engineering Experiment

Instructions for the Paper Bridge Engineering Experiment:

You will only need a few basic supplies, that I am sure you likely already have!

2 Paper Cups or plastic cups
Pennies or other small objects.
1 Sheet of Paper (notebook paper or printer paper would both work fine)
Scissors

The goal with this STEM experiment is to see how much weight a piece of paper can hold.

Begin with a flat piece of paper that is about 8 inches by 4 inches (Exact measurements are not super important, this is just what we used).

Line up the two paper cups and place the single sheet of paper across the cups, making a bridge.  Begin placing pennies on the paper between the two cups. See how many pennies it will hold before falling.

bridge building

Next, take that paper and fold it accordion style length-wise. Place it back on the cups and repeat it but place coins in the creases of the folded paper. This time it will hold SO many more pennies!

folded paper

Look how much stronger folding the paper made the paper bridge!

Easy Engineering Project- paper bridge

The Science Behind the Bridge Experiment:

Questions to discuss:

Would a longer bridge be stronger or weaker? Does the bridge shape matter? Would the width or dimension of the strip of paper change how much weight it can would?

Let kids experiment with different paper bridge designs & bridges of different styles or materials.

Learn about bridge design as you do this project.  What is the best bridge for strength and weight suspension, truss bridge, beam bridge, etc.?

Discuss why the paper bridge is so much stronger when folded. The shape of a material makes a difference in the strength of it.   As many times as you fold the paper, it multiplies the strength!  Folding the paper increases it’s stiffness and  makes it more dense and more stable. This allows it to hold more weight. With the accordion fold, the stress on the paper from the coins is going down toward to fold which has more strength.

 

Paper Bridge Engineering Experiment

See More STEM Engineering Resources:

I have couple of other easy engineering projects on my site if you want more ideas! Check out my post on Engineering: Make Paper Hold Up Books, as well as our Popsicle Stick Bridge that we built.

paper experiments- how many books will it holdPopsicle Stick Bridge Instructions

 

Similar Posts

4 Comments

  1. I am a Stem facilitator for the first time. it is an after school club. I love all your wonderful ideas. I want my students to try some of your ideas in my school. I need to know more about all your engineering ideas. Thanks for sharing all your wonderful projects.

Leave a Reply