Design a Dome 

Student Worksheet:

 Engineering Teamwork and Planning
You are part of a team of engineers given the challenge of building a dome to hold 120 grams of coins, candy, or other materials selected by your teacher.  You'll have lots of materials to use such as cardboard, wooden dowels, tape, foil, construction paper, tissue paper, glue, string, rubber bands, wire, popsicle sticks, paper cups, straws, pipe cleaners, paper clips, screen, and other readily available materials.  Your structure must be at least 14 cm tall measured from the top of the dome to the bottom.

 Planning and Design Phase
Think about the different ways you can use the materials provided to construct a dome structure.  You may add a skin or shell out of different materials, or have the frame be the full product. On a separate piece of paper, draw a diagram of your planned dome, and in the box below, make a list of the parts you think you might need.  You can adjust this later and also add more materials during construction.  

Materials Needed:

	

 Construction Phase
Build your dome and make any adjustments during construction that you like, including asking for additional materials. You can also trade materials with other student teams if they have extra items you would like to incorporate.

 Classroom Testing
Your teacher will suspend your dome as well as those made by other teams.  You'll receive points based on the following variables. 

  Design a Dome 

Student Worksheet (continued): 

 Evaluation 
Complete the evaluation questions below:

1. How similar was your original design to the actual dome you built?

2. If you found you needed to make changes during the construction phase, describe why
your team decided to make revisions.

3. Which dome that another team made was the most interesting to you?  Why?

4.  Do you think that this activity was more rewarding to do as a team, or would you have preferred to work alone on it? Why?  

5. If you could have used one additional material (tape, glue, wood sticks, foil -- as examples) which would you choose and why?

6. Do you think your dome would have been able to hold 600 grams of weight?  Why or why not?