The Brown Bag STEM Challenge- Zip Lines

For this week’s engineering design challenge, we’ll construct a zip line that will drop a marble onto a target.  In this exploration, students will learn about forces and motion while they explore the engineering design process.

This challenge is deceptively easy.  In general, students will go straight to building the zip line without brainstorming because the concept sounds so easy.  What they generally don’t realize is the no matter what creative solution they decide on, they need to find a way to release the marble onto a target.  In addition to that, students need to find a way for the cup to slide down the zip line slow enough that is can accurately release the marble at the right time.

As a result, this is a great challenge for reinforcing the importance of following the engineering design process.

The Brown Bag STEM Challenge bundle pack includes 10 high-interest design challenges that use low-cost materials that (almost all) fit into a brown bag!  Challenges comes complete with design briefs, STEM notebook pages and a PDF slide deck. In each challenge, students work in teams to design, build and test solutions, following NGSS Engineering Design Performance Expectations.

Get the Brown Bag STEM Challenge Bundle Pack with 10 Design Challenges including Zip Lines!