In our endless question for building perfection, the class continued our study of our Big Question:

How do we construct a building that is safe and sturdy?

We were studying what shape of pillar would hold the most mass. Our choices were the cylindrical pillar, the triangular pillar and the rectangular pillar. Having done our hypothesis and made sure that the experiment was a fair test, we stacked dictionaries on top of the pillars until they collapsed. You can see the results below!

AS you heard in the video, the cylindrical pillar will hold the most weight because it has no corners. The weight of the books is distributed evenly throughout the pillar allowing it to hold more weight than the other shapes.

Great fun. Tomorrow we will investigate how this relates to real life and see how one of the great cities in the world, Venice, uses cylindrical pillars to hold up an entire city!