1. Explain your process.
We started by splitting the pasta in half so that it wouldn’t be as big of a structure, and searched up a picture of a soccer ball for reference. It has pentagons with hexagons surrounding them, so we started with building them in a net. When we tried to hold them up to form the football, it wasn’t sturdy at all, so we tried to strengthen them by putting spaghetti across the middle of the pentagons and hexagons.
We found that it was not sturdy at all even after we strengthened it so we decided to start over, and this time we split the pasta in half again (they were now a quarter of the original size) and try it again. In the end, we still couldn’t form a soccer ball.
2. What did you learn/change?
I learned that it’s nearly impossible to build a soccer ball out of only spaghetti noodles and marshmallows, because they’re so flimsy and not supportive enough to hold themselves up. We learned that our first attempt with the longer spaghetti noodles wasn’t sturdy at all, so that’s why we split them in half again hoping that the smaller ones will make it stand up. We also learned that if you make a net and then try to lift it up to connect it together, you end up with sides overlapping.
3. How is this a math problem?
This is a math problem because it deals with shapes, like hexagons and pentagons, which is a part of geometry.
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