Science Olympiad Straw Tower Challenge
As one way of supporting Chicago Science in the City: 2007, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has partnered with Science Olympiad to create the Chicago Public School Straw Tower Challenge. For this Challenge, school based teams of CPS students in grades 5-12 will attempt to build the tallest tower possible out of a limited supply of drinking straws and tape. These towers not only have to be tall but also they must support the weight of a tennis ball. Schools will publish their results, and track the progress of other schools, on the Straw Tower Challenge website. Schools participating in the Challenge will be eligible to win various prizes as well as be invited to bring their towers to any of the Chicago Science in the City: Neighborhood Science Carnivals for a more public display of their work.
To support each school in completing the challenge, Science Olympiad has designed a series of lessons around tower building and the engineering of structures. These lessons can be used throughout the two weeks of Chicago Science in the City: 2007 as part of the regularly scheduled classroom instruction or during after-school or at lunch "club" time. Each school will be receiving a copy of these lesson plans along with two sets of tower building materials. This is enough material to involve approximately 25 to 30 students in the Challenge. Additional copies of the lesson plans will be available for download from the Straw Tower Challenge website. In addition, the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will be providing undergraduate engineering majors to help students as they design and build their towers. These engineering mentors will be "email pals" of the students and offer help and guidance as the students strive to create the tallest tower.
Submit tower results for your school’s top three teams starting October 2 by using the Online Data Acquisition (ODA) at https://oda.cps.k12.il.us and the Tower Contest link. This information will be used to provide a ranking of school results throughout the city. Schools that enter three teams’ worth of information by Friday, October 12 will be entered into a raffle for Straw Tower Challenge t-shirts and Fisher Scientific gift certificates for the school.
In addition, pictures of your students and their towers can be submitted for publication on the Straw Tower Challenge Photos webpage, by emailing them to towerphotos@cps.k12.il.us. Remember to secure a Media Release Student Consent form for pictures that include students. Copies of the media release form can be found at http://intranet.cps.k12.il.us/Forms.
