Science Fair

Little Kat needed to do some work for his science fair project. His idea was to test if building shape affects how well it can stand an earthquake. Here was the setup. Little Kat would create buildings out of sugar cubes. He would then put them on a box that was shaken by being on a treadmill. He would count how many sugar cubes fell down. That way he could figure measure the damage they took from a simulated earth quake.

Little Kat had grand plans to build his first built with about 150 sugar cubes. He could not get the building to stand up. Once he got to the third level of the building, the cubes kept falling down. Little Kat had to revise his design. He would create buildings that used about 20 sugar cubes. These he could erect quickly. But these were too sturdy and would not fall apart even when the treadmill was set to its highest level.

Finally Little Kat had to design buildings that would actually fall apart. He knew to make the buildings skinny and tall. We still only got one of them to fall down during the test run. Little Kat came up with a weird pentagon shaped building that fell apart when the treadmill started going fast. Good luck Little Kat in your science fair activities. I know you will have a lot to talk about with the judges.