How to Build a House With a Deck of Cards

Three story house of cards.

Building a house out of a deck of playing cards can be a useful activity for teaching students about the forces involved in architecture. Forces such as gravity pulling down on a building and friction between the surfaces of a building also play a factor when building a model of a house with a deck of cards. The weight of each floor of the house of cards must be distributed through many pairs of vertical walls that transmit the force to the ground. But beware, a single misplaced card can send the entire house toppling to the ground.

Things You'll Need

• Standard deck of 52 playing cards
• 1 Sheet of construction paper

Instructions

1. Clear a flat, steady working surface and lay a sheet of construction paper on it. The construction paper will serve to increase the friction between the cards and the table to help prevent your house of cards from sliding down.

2. Take two cards from a standard deck of playing cards and place them on the construction paper leaning against each other in a tee-pee shape. The base of the cards should be about two inches away from each other.

3. Create another tee-pee shape using two more cards from the deck. Place this second tee-pee directly next to the first tee-pee you created so one of the cards from the first is touching one of the cards from the second at the base.

4. Lay a card flat across the top of the 2 tee-pees.

5. Build a third tee-pee on top of the card that was laid across the first two tee-pees in order to make a second floor for your house of cards.

6. Continue building tee-pees next to and on top of the previously created tee-pees in order to build your house as high and wide as you can make it.

References

• Worsley School Online: Forces in a House of Cards
• Sydney Daily News: Daily Discovery