Spider Web STEM Challenge

One of the coolest adaptations of spiders is their ability to use traps to capture prey. This ability has evolved over time in spiders and it is advantageous because it allows spiders to catch prey without having to burn the energy to run them down.  As a result, webs provides an energy efficient way of gathering food. 

Spider webs are made of silk that is stronger than the same weight of steel and yet much more flexible.  Spiders produce this silk from spinneret glands and several different types of silk are produced.  Sticky silk designed to trap prey is used in web construction.  Fine thin silk is used for both web construction and to wrap up and immobilize captured prey.  Fine silk safety lines are also used frequently as spiders are often blown from their webs.

In this STEM Challenge, students create and test a model of a spider web that spans the gap needed for the best hunting possible. Spiders construct their webs in an organized and calculated manner.  In designing their web, they should engineer like a spider who starts with the foundational strand to bridge the gap, adds the outward ones and then ties things together with the circular strands.         

 

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Spider Web SC Resources:

Spider Web Engineering SC w vocab
Spider Web Student Sheet
Spider Web Wonders-Elementary
Spider Web Wonders-Middle School

​Content Focus: adaptations, habitats, natural selection, animals, and engineering.

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