ROSEVILLE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Building bridges is a staple STEM activity and a fun competitive event, but what do students actually learn? The real lessons of STEM are in the design-test-redesign cycle. Yet, with traditional bridge-building activities using materials such as toothpicks or popsicle sticks, students often don’t get the opportunity to accurately measure tension and compression or to redesign and rebuild their bridges after they break during testing. To help students learn how bridges really work while applying real-life engineering design concepts, PASCO® has introduced the Building Better Bridges Kit.
The Building Better Bridges Kit provides engaging, intuitive, and lasting lessons about the construction of bridges. Based on PASCO’s successful Structures Systems, the kit uses flexible I-beams, connectors, and truss screws to allow students to quickly assemble simple trusses and bridges. With the new Wireless Load Cell included in the kit, students can measure forces under tension or compression anywhere on their structure and see the results in real-time with PASCO software.
To accompany the kit, PASCO offers free, downloadable lab activities that take students from basic concepts of tension and compression forces to working structures. With these activities, students can investigate forces in equilibrium, internal forces, moments in equilibrium, and the strength of a truss member, and they can engage in hands-on truss analysis.
“Traditional bridge-building activities are usually just contests to see how much weight each bridge will hold before it breaks, and there’s no discussion about why some designs succeed and others fail. By pairing the Building Better Bridges Kit with these activities, teachers can make them more meaningful by helping students first discover the engineering principles that they can then transfer to their toothpick, popsicle stick, or balsa wood bridges,” said Tom Hsu, chief product officer for PASCO. “Using the Building Better Bridges Kit, students can build bridges that behave like the real thing. When a load is applied, they can examine which parts of the bridge are under tension or experiencing compression. After testing, they can redesign their structures and test them again, which is important for their learning.”
For more information, visit www.pasco.com.
