The other day, we were making newspaper towers to see which group can make the tallest stable structure. At first, we came up with many different ideas for how we should make the tower, but we didn't seem to agree on which idea we should use. Evantually, we came to a comprimise and made our tower with components from each idea.
The physics of our tower was that the base was to be as big as possible so that it could support the cylindrical newspapers above it. As we got higher and higher though, we realized that our base wasn't big enough, as the tower kept leaning to the side. So, in order to keep the tower standing, we added a coned-shape newspaper under the big base in order to keep the tower standing. This could've worked, but then we saw that the tower was barely able to stand on its own due to the fact that the upper part of the structure was too heavy. We realized this when we were evaluating all the towers that were built in the class. It seems that in order to make a tall structure stable, we should've made our tower's upper part with less weight. Since we were using cylindrical newspaper, the tower has more weight on the top and thus is more prone to falling.
Our tower was pretty muched scrapped at the end, so I don't have a picture to show D=
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