Resham Mawalkar stacks bricks on her team’s note card tower.
School has just begun, but learning is well underway as evidenced by a recent activity which took place in Daniel Hunt’s Honors Physics class at Westerville Central High School. The winning team of four students – Abigail Steele, Katie Lueckel, Caitlin Luby, and Resham Mawalkar – designed and built a six-inch tower out of note cards that held more than 133 pounds of weight. The assignment, called the “Bargain Brick Build,” is intended to get pupils thinking about engineering principles on a smaller scale from the perspective of cost effectiveness, time constraints, and access to materials. Groups could use note cards, paperclips, tape and staples with the knowledge that each came with a specific cost. This year’s first place group was able to use only 26 note cards and still hold a record amount of weight.