Bucket Building Challenge 

Engineering 

Overview 
Buckets in mechanical engineering can have a distinct quality from the traditional
bucket (pail) whose purpose is to contain things. Larger versions of this type of
bucket equip ​bucket trucks​ to contain human beings, buckets in water-hauling
systems in mines or in ​helicopter buckets​ to hold water to combat fires. ​Buckets
exist in a variety of sizes or shapes, large enough to hold a person or small enough
to gather water data from rainfall. ​Everyone has seen a bucket and knows they are
meant to hold weight, but have you ever made a structure to hold a bucket?

 
 1 
 

Materials 
● Straws

● Masking Tape

● String

● Scissors

● Cup

● Beans

The Problem 
You need to hold as many beans as you can in the cup, suspended in a structure off
of the ground.

The Goal 
Create a sturdy structure using only straws, tape, string, and a cup as your bucket.
After you design your structure, test it to see just how many beans it can hold. Be
sure to revise your prototype to see if you can make it even sturdier!

Design 
Keep in mind:

● What is your design goal?

● How can you make your structure strong enough to hold the beans?

● What is the best way to utilize the tape and string?

● After testing, can you make changes to your design?

 
 2 
 

Make a Prediction 
Make a prediction of how many beans you will be able to place in the bucket without
the structure collapsing or tipping over. 

Build the Structure & Test the Sturdiness 

After you build your bucket structure, slowly add beans in increments of 5 into the
cup and see how many you can put without your structure collapsing and tipping
over. Record the greatest amount of beans your structure was able to support
before it collapsed or tipped over.

   

 
 3 
 

Worksheet 

Test the Structure & Make a Conclusion 

After you build your structure and add beans to the bucket, make a conclusion about
the effectiveness of your design and how you could have increased the number of
beans your structure can hold.

Reflection on Design Process 

How effective was your initial design? Describe the steps you took, from your initial
idea, to your final structure. What helped you most to make improvements? (Testing,
seeing other’s ideas, trial & error, etc). What would you do to improve your structure,
given more time or materials?

 
 

   

 
 4 
 

Challenges 
● Build a structure that is greater than 1 foot tall

● Build a structure that can hold twice as many beans

● Build a structure that can hold something that can hold objects heavier than

beans (coins, marbles, etc)

● Make a structure that can hold multiple buckets at once

● Use a minimal amount of materials, to make an effective structure

● Use as many materials as you can, to make an effective structure