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| The triangle didn't need any struts! |
Last week our class built POLYGONS like Mrs. Laubscher's class. We found out that certain polygons were stronger than others but we wondered if the weak polygons could be made stronger. This week we investigated our question. We used additional strips of paper, called struts, to reinforce the weaker polygons. You can see that we had to add struts to the square, pentagon, hexagon, heptagon and octagon to make them more stable. Guess what we found out...there is actually a pattern to how many struts must be added to each shape! We realized that patterns are EVERYWHERE in math, we just need to look closely to find them.
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| What do you notice about the struts? |
Believe it or not, we proved that the triangle is indeed the strongest polygon. Do you notice what shape is made when the struts are added to the square, pentagon, hexagon, heptagon and octagon? Look closely...
When we added struts we realized they just cut the polygons into small triangles! Pretty amazing, huh? Check out some of the patterns we noticed:
Tave used a table to organize the patterns he noticed:
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Can you see the growing pattern in the # of struts and the # of triangles?
Liam used words to explain his thinking about polygons:
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