The Brown Bag STEM Challenge II- Marble Madness

Students are used to challenges that ask them to do something the fastest, but how about the slowest? In this scenario, students are challenged to create a marble run where the marble that reaches the end in the slowest time wins.

This challenge is a great way to get kids thinking more deeply because the challenge is to complete the course the slowest.  Each team must create a course for their marble using piece of 20 x 30 foam board.  Students can use any found items that you provide, but I like to make sure to include sentence strips because they are thicker than regular paper and can easily be folded into marble tracks. I also like to provide some fun items like bathroom cups, cotton balls, cardboard tubes and paperclips to make creating the course more fun.

The Brown Bag STEM Challenge design challenges focus on some key STEM concepts like critical thinking and problem solving, all while being low-cost to implement  This sequel series contains all of the same elements (design briefs, NGSS alignment, Interactive STEM Notebook pages, etc.) as the original, but with new challenges!

So, what did we learn?
Next Generation Science Standards: Asking Questions and Defining Problems, Developing and Using Models, Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions; CCC- Patterns, Cause and Effect, Scale, Proportion and Quantity

CCSS Math: Measurement and Data, Geometry, Ratios & Proportional Relationships

Get The Brown Bag STEM Challenge II Bundle Pack with ALL 10 Engineering Design Challenges including Marble Madness!