Snowball Ramp Challenge
By: Annabel Groseclose
On the Friday before break the sixth grade science classes were challenged by there teachers to build a snowball ramp. Their task was to construct a ramp that would carry a marble the entire length, change direction and stop at the end. The only problem was that all they had to build the ramp was 1 sheet of newspaper and a meter of masking tape. Their ramps also had to be 15cm tall. After the ramp was completed the students were supposed to drop a marble down their ramp and see if it would be successful. At first the sixth graders struggled. They had just started and already they didn’t know what to do. The groups tried many different ways to get there marble down the ramp before the other groups could. One of the biggest problems the students in Mrs. Hasbrouck’s 8th period class faced was getting the ramp to be 15cm tall. Many times groups said they were done when their ramp was just under 15cm and the groups had to try again. They didn’t know how to make the ramp stand up. Then the students began to succeed. Many groups decided to tear up their newspaper and then roll them up and put the ends of them together. The groups would then roll their marble through the tube they created. Other groups would fold their newspaper into a triangle, tape it to the table and then make a barrier that the marble could fallow on the way down the ramp. It was very upsetting for many groups when after 40 minutes of hard work and good ideas they still could not get their marble to go down their ramp successfully. But many groups did find success and it was a very fun experiment for most.
