Perhaps if we'd thought of the Eiffel Tower instead?
I was a bit good at science when I was at school, so when the local college announced a special science day I was one of the pupils picked to join the group. Excitement - a day off school!

When we got there we were ushered into the sports hall, where a bunch of other kids were gathered. We were presented with lots of sheets of newspaper and sellotape, and told that we were in a contest to build the tallest tower we could out of them, without any assistance from our accompanying teacher. We had an hour, if I recall correctly, and we all set to work.

We were sitting at the table discussing how to proceed. The teacher apparently considered this discussion to be a sign of weak-mindedness, and muttered loudly "Think about the Blackpool Tower!".

We spurned this advice. Our high concept design was a tripod, "because tripods can't fall over", made out of tubes of paper "because tubes are really strong". Faultless reasoning, I'm sure you'll agree, and we set to work with the newspapers and sellotape.

Fast-forward about an hour.

The other teams had produced some really good structures. Most of them were so tall that they were having to stand on chairs or tables in order to finish them off. Some of them were climbing the monkey bars on the wall to get the last bit of height possible. One of the more elegant looking ones must have been fifteen feet tall if it was an inch.

And what of our mighty, tube-based effort?

It was mighty, of that there is no doubt, with its three stout tubular legs. They were stout because our tubes kept bending, so we'd had to reinforce them with sellotape. Then the thing kept falling over, so we'd also had to bend the legs at the bottom to make feet, and then it started keeling over again where the bends were so we reinforced them with sellotape too. All this reinforcement had actually taken quite a lot of time and about three rolls of sellotape. And the time had come to put down our papers and step back.

Yes, time to step back and admire the mighty edifice of a two-foot tall tripod with three-inch thick legs. The whole thing was cased in lumpy sellotape that glistened stickily under the fluorescent lights. A fourth tube of paper with a hastily drawn Union Jack on top added another foot of stylish altitude.

When the judges came round, one of them made a stifled sobbing noise and had to turn away. I expect he was overcome with emotion. Our teacher certainly was: he had a face like thunder and didn't speak to us at all in the minibus back to school.

I still can't see the Blackpool Tower without sniggering. And I still have no idea what any of it had to do with science.
(richardm, Thu 13 Aug 2009, 15:47, Reply)