As the year 2021 drew to a close, our last assessment for Science, was an engineering project. We were allowed to choose groups of four people, and in those groups, we had to build an earthquake resistant building, just by using pasta straws and blue-tack within a $60 budget. However, it was hard because 1 gram of blue-tack was equivalent to a dollar, and so was 10 centimeters of pasta. This challenged required a huge amount of problem solving and collaboration with teammates in order to design a building that is effective but also cheap.
In the early stages of this project, before putting pen to paper we all collectively as a group, went home and researched more into earthquake resistant buildings. We did this in order to widen our knowledge of earthquake-resistant buildings and see what architects had used to make buildings stand up successfully. Then, using this knowledge, we would hopefully take some of these aspects and incorporate them into our building.
Here is a summation of the different ways to make a building earthquake-resistant:
- Create a flexible foundation – Constructing a building on pads that isolate the foundation from the ground, effectively absorbing seismic waves and preventing them from travelling a building. During an earthquake, the isolators vibrate while the structure remains steady
- Shield buildings from vibrations – Architects create a ‘seismic invisibility cloak’ underneath the buildings. Basically, they put concrete and plastic rings underneath the building, which essentially force seismic waves to move through the outer rings, which channels them away from the building, make them dissipate into the plates in the ground
- Shock absorbers – Buildings use shock absorbers the same way cars use them. Basically, shock absorbers work by taking your kinetic energy of your suspension and converting it to thermal energy which is then consumed by the atmosphere through heat exchange. This creates fluids that filled up oil-cylinders. In the car, there are orifices (tiny holes) and because these holes only allows small amounts of fluids into the pistons, the pistons slow down spring and suspension movement. This is used in earthquake resistant buildings. Basically the horizontal motion of buildings from earthquakes will make the piston push against the orifices, transforming mechanical energy into heat, which slows down movement.
To start off building, we had to plan and draw a sample sketch of our building, scaled down. Our group, initially was going to build a tower, with a square base, and building up from it, until we reach 30 centimeters, then building a triangle, then adding a stick on top of everything. The sketch can be seen below.
As you can see, on the left there is the first design, of what we were going to build, however we overestimated how much blue-tack we would use, and realised this when we measured out 25 grams of blue-tack. We then went back to the drawing board, and used only 10 grams of blue-tack. With having more money to spend, we tried to redo our design, by adding pasta sticks across each layer in order to connect the building and make it more strong, however we realised that this would be too expensive, and we ended up getting rid of the idea.
This was a risky move at the time, because all the other groups were well ahead of us, buying their materials and some of them already testing their first prototype. At the time, we didn’t even know if we would be able to build a tower in time, however, we still took our time and re-did an idea. We were initially perplexed at what to use as a base, until we started fiddling around with the pasta. One of our group members, started building a little triangle, and that’s when it hit us all, as you can see in the second drawing.
The drawing itself, was rushed because we came up with the idea on the spot, however what it was is basically we built a large triangle on the outside, and then had a smaller one connected to it on the inside. Then from the inside triangle, we would start building up and then we would use the outer triangle to connect it, in order to have a really good support. From there, we would then have a massive stick going as high as possible in order to reach the minimum height of 60cm. At first, this idea was good and then we thought it would work.
However, as you can see in the video, the top of the building, once shaken aggressively did not manage to maintain the required height and instead broke off from the top of the building. Using this knowledge, when we went into the second prototype testing, what we did was use a bit more math. The original foundation from the building in the video, was only $30, so we still had half of our money to spend. Like I said earlier, when making changes we did a bit more math. Basically, we used ratios and said that for every stick we added onto the top of the tower, we would add two or three more on the bottom to strengthen the foundation. Using this, we basically made new connections and joints, closer to the top of the tower, which in the next video you will see, allowed us to keep the tower standing.
In our group, the roles assigned were:
- Aaron: Project Manager – Delegating tasks to the rest of the group, making sure everything was on time, and everyone was doing the right thing
- EJ: Reporter – In charge of taking ideas and sketches, as well as making the actual tower. Also, needed to use a lot of problem solving and thinking in order to effectively handle mistakes and make sure the tower was better
- Tim: Speaker – Went around, asking for help from the teacher and other groups, taking in advice and giving input to EJ and myself on how to improve our tower
- Kenneth: Equipment Manager – Was responsible for getting the correct length of pasta straws we need as well as the sufficient amount of blue-tack. Was also responsible for cleaning up and prepping workstations.
As the project manager, some of the capabilities I demonstrated during this task were leadership, communication, collaboration and problem solving. As the project manager, it meant running the whole operation, overseeing everything everyone was doing, and making sure we were all on track and ready. Especially when our first design wasn’t working out, we all were lost and didn’t know what to do, which is when I really had to step up and display leadership. Not losing my cool, I held my ground and got all of us re-thinking again, but at a quicker pace, which enabled us to get back on track quickly enough, and support the rest of my group. My overall leadership skills, were supported through my effective communication and collaboration with the group as a whole. This was because, I was able to speak clearly and get by point across in a way that we could all understand, not only that, but I also made sure that everyone’s ideas were incorporated or heard so that no one would feel left or or useless. Lastly, I used problem solving, in order to help build a successful tower. When we built our the first triangular-based prototype, we were simply unsure of what to do, in order to support the top of the tower. To problem solve around this, what our group did, was simply to watch other groups testing during the lesson, and see what worked for them. Some, we saw had used massive amounts of blue-tack, and others had a stronger foundation. Then taking this both into account, we talked about our design, and then came up with the ratio idea of every 1 stick on top of the tower, meant another 2-3 on the bottom, which in the end helped our tower, to withstand an earthquake, while suffering minimal damage.
I really enjoyed this task, for not only did it challenge me to think harder and problem solve better, but also made me a good leader, and gave me insight into other people’s thought process and what they were up to. I was able to see how well EJ could problem solve and innovate, Kenneth’s ability to collaborate with group members, as well as Tim’s ability to communicate effectively with others. If I was to do this task all over again from scratch, I would definitely look into other ways to build the tower, or what we could have done to make our building a bit more presentable and neat.