Breaking Point Aaron Lao Sir Winston Churchill Secondary Floor Location : M 27 P

This experiment examined how much more weight is held by a set of popsicle sticks when they are attached. It was hypothesized that if attaching popsicle sticks together reduced the effects of compressive and tensile stress, then sets of popsicle sticks attached together would hold more weight than when unattached. You would think that if the amount of popsicle sticks was doubled, the weight held would also double. The goal was to pin-point how exactly how much more weight could be held by sets of popsicle sticks attached by glue, by staples, and by both glue and staples, or when the number of popsicle sticks increased. A set of popsicle sticks was placed across two platforms, and weights were placed onto the centre of the set. The weight was recorded when they broke. The independent variable was the type of attachment and number of popsicle sticks, the dependent variable was the amount of weight held, in grams. Variables such as the amount of glue, the position of staples, the type of popsicle sticks and the position of weights were controlled. Sets of two, three and four popsicle sticks were used. For each, there were samples attached with glue, some with staples, and some with both glue and staples. The unattached forms of these sets of popsicle sticks were used as the controlled samples. In order to show that the glue and staples did not hold any weight themselves, single popsicle sticks with glue and staples applied to them were also tested. For each of these sixteen different sets, fifteen trials were used.

The results showed that glue had a significant effect on the amount of weight held. The strongest sets of popsicle sticks all had glue. Although glue did not strengthen single popsicle sticks, their adhesive properties were great enough to more than double the amount of weight held. This increased got larger as more popsicle sticks were added. The staples had a very minute effect. They increased the amount of weight held by all sets, but only by very, very little. Glue was so successful because it managed to keep the popsicle sticks together along the entire plane. The popsicle sticks attached by staples would often separate between the staples. It was also discovered that when an additional popsicle stick is added, the increase in weight held was much greater each time another popsicle stick was added. As well, another pattern emerged, revealing that the results became more inconsistent as popsicle sticks held more weight. Samples that held little weight had very consistent, very similar results, while samples that held more weight had a wider range of results. These results support the hypothesis that attaching popsicle sticks greatly increases the amount of weight the set of popsicle sticks can hold, though the increase was much greater than expected. In fact, the strongest set of popsicle sticks held fifty kilograms more weight than a single popsicle stick. This experiment is meant to emulate real-life situations, and has applications in real life.