Architecture Focus: Building with columns

Children love creating, building and testing but most of all they love experimenting. My son loves building and creating things, and we allow him to do it. Currently, his room has been transformed into a camping site, with a tent build out of his desk, toybox, his sister's stroller and some of his big toys. Allow them to create, use their immagination and just go wild with creativeness.

Paper Column experiment

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You will need the following:

1. A4 paper
2. Glue
3. Books

Instructions

1. Use your paper to fold a cylinder column, a square column and a triangular column.
2. Place them on a flat surface.
3. Use one column at a time.
4. Plcae one book at a time on top of the column.
5. Record how many books could each column take.
   
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What type of questions can be asked?

1. Why do you think could each column take the said number of books?
2. Is there a different way in which you would like to create the columns?

What is the science behind the results?

1. The cylinder carries the most books because the weight of the books are distributed equally.
2. The square and the triangular columns doesn't distribute the weight of the books equally, instead the weight is shifted to the edges and the corners. This then deforms the walls and leads to a collapse of the column.
   
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Short history of the column

During early architecture the Egyptians, Persians, Greeks and Romans used columns in their architecture.

Here is a video for interesting sake:

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