Roman archways lesson

My Father's World curriculum has had some great activities for us to do. This was one of my favorite ones so far this year. We learned about how arches work! (We're studying Ancient Rome right now.)

First, we experimented with how much a straight "bridge" could hold:


before it collapsed:Then, we made a bridge with an arch under it. Look how much more it could hold... and we could have kept going!
Using our long-collected empty pudding boxes, and a little bit of sandpaper to replicate the rough textures of the stones, we then made our own arches. Even I was amazed that they stayed up with no "mortar" or anything else to hold them!

It was a fun hands-on lesson.

My friend from high school, Mindy in PA, is also using this same curriculum and they built an arch of their own -- a lot more colorful than ours:

Rome, Pennsylvania, North Carolina.... arches are impressive everywhere. :)