- Hey kids, I'm Casey from Mid-America Science Museum.

And today we're in the Tinkering Studio.

The Tinkering Studio is a place where art and science collide.

It's where you get to be creative, trying things, testing things out, working with your hands, and really, where we all get to be engineers.

But what's an engineer?

An engineer, is just a person that solves problems, all kinds of different problems.

There are mechanical engineers who work with machines, electrical engineers that work with electricity, even food engineers that work with things that you eat.

Engineering is all around you.

In fact, everything you see pretty much had to be engineered, all the buildings, all the machines, all the inventions, it all had to do with engineering.

One kind of engineer is a civil engineer.

They're the people who help plan cities, stuff like streets, and bridges, and even the buildings that you see.

Right now, I have a challenge that I'm trying to do.

My challenge is I have a car that needs to get from one side of the river to the other.

It looks like I need to build a bridge, but I also have some constraints.

Constraints are limits.

One of my limits is these are all the materials I have, paper, tape and scissors.

Paper doesn't have a reputation for being the strongest building material, but there are some ways around it.

Engineers are really good at physics.

So they're able to figure out ways to make ordinary objects stronger.

Let's do an experiment and see what I mean.

I have two pieces of paper here.

One of them I folded into a square shape, and one of them, I folded into a circle.

We're gonna see which shape will hold up the most weight.

So let's take my book on the square.

Ooh!

Hmm, that failed pretty quickly, not terribly strong.

How about my circle?

Oh, look at that!

Yes, that holds it really well.

So I know that the supports on my bridge need to be a circle shape.

But this one's a little bit big.

I don't think there's a need to build a bridge quite that tall.

Let's use some smaller ones instead.

Two columns.

We should also probably secure them to the ground.

I don't want them wobbling all over the place.

If you look at real bridges, their columns are definitely sunk deep into the earth.

But for today, just a little bit of tape will do.

Now I need to move on to the base of my bridge.

Well, the paper is certainly wide enough, but I don't think it's gonna hold up the weight of my car.

Nope, definitely a problem.

So I need to make it bigger and thicker.

If I fold it and make layers, now, it's a lot stronger.

Still, not quite strong enough, but that's because my bridge is bending.

I need a way to secure it.

I think we need to tape our bridge.

So I'm gonna add a little bit just to make it a bit stronger, make sure my layers don't come apart, and I need a way to secure it.

So I'm gonna tape it down onto my columns to make sure it doesn't go anywhere.

Have you noticed that I've had to keep trying to change something and make it a little different?

My bridge didn't work exactly right the first time.

And that's part of the engineering process.

You have to experiment, you have to test it out, make a model, and then adjust it and try it again, and see if you can find a way to make it work better.

That's what engineering is all about.

Yep, definitely much stronger, but I have one final problem.

How is my car supposed to get on or off?

I think I'm gonna need to add some ramps.

Once again, I think I can do it, which is one piece of paper.

I'm gonna cut it in half so I can get one for each side, and do my folding thing again.

To make it faster, I'm gonna fold them together.

Then pull it apart.

Is it gonna work if I just lay it on there?

Hmm, almost.

But again, we don't want it wiggling around too much.

So let's get some more tape, attach it to the top, and the bottom.

Engineering is just like all science.

You do an experiment, you test something out, you see some things that might need to be changed to make it better, and then you try it again.

Awesome!

Looks like I have one successful paper bridge.

Looks like we're successful engineers after all.

Next time you come to Mid-America Science Museum, make sure you drop into the Tinkering Studio and try out your engineering skills with me.

Thanks for joining me!

Bye for now!