Windbag Wigwams

Each week in our new Fun Funky Fungineering class we give our Fungineers an engineering challenge. This week the challenge is to build a free-standing structure using "Windbags."

Here is the script for the mission and a video! Enjoy and replicate!

Greetings Fungineers!

I am Agent B.

My true identity must remain secret for reasons of national security.

We need your help.

In 1962 the world’s first successful interplanetary mission happened when the United States sent the space probe Mariner 2 to Venus.

Mariner 2 discovered high temperatures and ended all hopes of finding life on Venus.

But there are many discoveries that still await us on Venus. There may be minerals on Venus that don’t exist on Earth or diamonds as big as a basketball.

The public knows about the space probe MESSENGER which flew by Venus in 2009 on it’s way to Mercury where it is now in orbit.

But NOBODY knows what happened last week. Last week I LED a super secret team of astronauts on a super super secret mission to the planet Venus.

As we were entering orbit around Venus a section of our probe broke off and  … we lost our special heat-reflecting tents which burned up upon entering Venus’s atmosphere.

Venus is known as Earth’s sister planet because of similar size, gravity, and composition.

But Venus is VERY different from Earth. It has dense clouds and a dense atmosphere that are SO thick we can’t even see through them. The only way to see Venus is with radar.

This thick atmosphere holds in heat – a greenhouse effect.

So Venus is even hotter than Mercury even though it is further away from the sun – 860 degrees Fahrenheit. It is believed that Venus once had oceans – but they evaporated due to this runaway greenhouse effect.

Fungineers it is HOT on Venus. HOT HOT HOT

We have special heat-reflecting clothing. We won’t die before the being rescued. But we can’t dig for diamonds in this heat. Without our tents we can’t escape the heat of the sun. We need your help.

If we can’t dig, our mission fails and we have wasted billions of tax dollars.

I could get in a lot of trouble for that, so I … really need your help too.

The only resources we have are some rubber bands, some tape, thin plastic tarps and these special bags that were meant for storing waste.

Agents at Steve Spangler Science call these bags “Wind Bags.” These agents think it MIGHT be possible with enough imagination and creativity to use these bags to build a protective structure.

Your mission – if you choose to accept it… is to discover if there is ANY way to construct a protective structure using only Windbags. The structure must have NO floor so that it can sit on the planet’s surface shielding us while we dig INSIDE for diamonds and other Venutian minerals.

Good luck Fungineers.

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