Building something that stands up
Design & Technology · Early Years · The School
A wide bottom
A tower with a wide bottom stands up better. A narrow bottom is much wobblier. Try building the same tower twice. Start one with a big flat piece. Start the other with a small one. The wide one will stand taller before it wobbles. Builders use the same idea for real buildings.
Heavy at the bottom
Put the heavy pieces at the bottom. Put the light ones at the top. A tower with a heavy block on top tips over easily. It is the same reason you carry a heavy bag low. You do not carry it on your head. Bottom-heavy is steady. Top-heavy is not.
When it falls down
Every builder's tower falls down sometimes. That is not a failure. It tells you something useful. Ask where it fell. Was it at the bottom? In the middle? At the top? Then change that part. Then build it again. Making something twice, and making it better, is what a good builder does.
Build a tower ten blocks high and one block wide. Give it a gentle push. Over it goes. Now use the same ten blocks again. Build a wide base of six, with four stacked above. Push it the same way. It stays up. Same number of blocks. Same set of pieces. What changed is the width of the base, and how low the weight sits. Test every tower with the same push. If you do not, it is not a fair test.