Herricks fifth-graders at Denton Avenue Elementary recently participated in a fun activity called the Bone Bridge STEM Challenge. This project challenged students to build a bridge for length, strength, and capacity using cotton swabs as “bones” and other select materials.

The students only had 45 minutes to design and build their bridges and were instructed to use certain criteria and constraints. The bridges had to be at least one inch above the build surface and be at least one inch in width using only Q-tips, pipe cleaners, craft sticks, and wooden clothes pins.