Making plywood

This afternoon we followed up our experience of making particleboard with making our very own plywood. Our first idea to address was whether plywood came from a single Plywood tree or if it was made from multiple trees. After some discussion we came to a class conclusion that it was made from multiple trees and glued together. But why are there so many layers was our BIG IDEA to address before we got to make our own. We set out to discover that very thing through an exploration with the strength of Popsicle sticks. We first successfully broke one stick, two sticks, three sticks became a struggle, and four turned out to be impossible to break...

 We observed that the more wood you layered together the stronger it would become. Once we felt comfortable with this idea we moved on to making our own plywood. Each student was given four pieces of thin wood and some glue. They put a heavy dose of glue on a piece of wood and then pressed them together as hard as they could for a count of 20. We discovered that every time we glued a new piece of wood on our plywood became that much stronger.

 By the time we were all done we decided we had to take a couple class pictures with our very own made plywood...