Coin Tower Challenge: Discovery at Home

Blog, Discovery at Home

Do the Coin Tower Challenge!

Use the power of inertia to move the bottom coin, and only the bottom coin, from your tower! This activity is powered by our friends at Evergy.

What you need:

  • Coins of the same size.
  • Thin cardboard (make sure the cardboard is thinner than one of your coins).

Directions:

  1. Stack the coins on top of each other to create a tower.
  2. Use a piece of thin cardboard to remove the coin at the bottom of the tower. Hint: Speed is important.
  3. Remove as many bottom coins from the tower as possible before the tower falls!

Ways to expand:

  • Use different sized coins in the tower. Do the different sized coins make it easier or harder to remove the coins?
  • Create a structure that has multiple towers and/or a more complex structure. Try to remove the bottom coins without the tower falling.

What kids learn:

  • Experimentation! When kids experiment, they’re learning how to learn. Failure is an important part of experimenting, so let kids try things that won’t work. It’s how they figure things out!
  • Hand eye coordination. Young children can use activities to help improve communication between their minds and bodies.
  • Basic engineering skills. Engineers solve problems with constraints, in this case, friction and inertia. They learn to solve problems by using the engineering design process: asking questions, coming up with solutions, building, testing and improving.

Vocabulary:

  • Constraint. A limitation or restriction. Materials, time, and space are common constraints. Real engineers have to work around constraints all the time!
  • Force. Energy caused by a push or a pull. In this case, the pull created by gravity and the stack of coins.
  • Newton’s First Law of Motion. Every object will continue moving at the same speed or remain still unless something makes it change.
  • Inertia. The resistance of an object to change its motion or direction.
  • Friction. A force acting in the opposite direction. When two things rub together they cause friction.