Arches
People building houses or any other kind of people have always had this one big problem, which you may have had also if you ever tried to build a clubhouse: how do you get the roof to stay up?
One way (the way people figured out first) is to have a long piece of wood or stone that goes over the whole way from one wall to the other, like this:
You can try this yourself
if you get a set of arch-building
blocks. Or cut them yourself out of wood. Try it with Legos.
You lay the arch out on a board laid flat on the floor, and then tilt
it up slowly and see if it holds.
Project on arches
To find out more about arches, check out these books from Amazon.com
or from your library:
Arches to Zigzags: An Architecture ABC, by Michael J. Crosbie (2000). Shows what an arch is, or a gable, or an eave. For younger kids.
Eyewitness: Building, by Philip Wilkinson, Dave King, and Geoff Dann (2000). Lavishly illustrated, like other Eyewitness books for kids, and with good explanations of most architectural terms.
City: A Story of Roman Planning and Construction, by David Macaulay (1983).
About a barrel vault
Teachers' guides on architecture
Architecture-related gifts
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