Design and test a simple structure model on a hand-shaken tray to investigate which building features better resist shaking.
Engineers test earthquake safety using shake tables, platforms that shake a model building the way real ground shakes during an earthquake, to see which designs hold up and which collapse. This week you build a simple version at home: a tray or box you can shake by hand, and small model structures made of blocks, cups, or toothpicks and marshmallows.
A fair shake-table test compares two or more structure designs using the exact same shaking, so any difference in what survives is due to the design, not the test. Wider bases, cross-bracing, and lower centers of gravity are all real features engineers use to make buildings more earthquake-resistant, and this week you get to test some of those ideas yourself.
Mastery looks like: They can build and test two structure designs on a shake table, correctly predicting and explaining which design feature improved earthquake resistance.
Common stumbles: Shaking each test structure differently, making the comparison unfair; changing more than one design feature at once, making it unclear which change mattered.