Geodesic Domes with Jelly Beans and Toothpicks

My students completed this STEM challenge this past week.  Building a geodesic dome with a bag of jelly beans and toothpicks is not that difficult, so I added a few more rules to up the challenge factor!

Question:  Can your group build the strongest geodesic dome using toothpicks and all of the jelly beans in the bag?

The kids found it really challenging to use all of the jelly beans.  I got the toothpicks and jelly beans (one bag per group) at the Dollar Tree.  Super cheap, super fun, and super challenging!

Here are some of our geodesic domes prior to testing them for strength:

As you can see, we had a wide variety of designs!  Some of these domes were able to hold five textbooks before collapsing!

You can use many different types of candy to build geodesic domes.  Why not try these with your class? Here is the link to the STEM Challenge pack, if you are interested!