Year 9 camp was a thoroughfare of bumps and turns that we had to endure. But through the pain and hardship, we learned a variety of valuable life lessons, such as leadership, perseverance and teamwork. By using and improving on these skills, I personally was able to increase my enjoyment of camp and my outlook on it.
The value of leadership was an essential one that I was striving my hardest to use in all circumstances. I utilized leadership during various team activities and jobs around the campsite, on hikes or anywhere that it was necessary. An example of when leadership was shown was when I instructed my cooking group on what ingredients to use, how to use them and with allocating various tasks to each member of the group.
Being perseverant on camp was the only way that I was able to achieve and overcome the many obstacles I encountered on my tour. Somehow being able to get up at 6am in the morning and pack my hiking pack, whilst enduring the freezing cold breeze was all thanks to perseverance.
Lastly, teamwork allowed us to effectively and efficiently complete tasks throughout our groups, whether it came to cooking, setting up tents or other activities. Without this, the many accomplishments and necessary jobs wouldn’t have been finished.
Overall, year 9 camp allowed the values of leadership, perseverance and teamwork to prevail in many different ways across our stay.
Earthquakes are catastrophic natural disasters which have devastating effects on both people and infrastructure. Over time, builders have slowly started to develop ways of preventing damage and loss of life caused by earthquakes. We are tasked with following and designing various improvement methods to create, record and improve our earthquake-proof structure.
Brainstorming Process
Before we started the building process, our group needed to brainstorm and develop various ideas about what features we could possibly add to make our structure as earthquake proof as we could.
The base of this structure intended to almost lift the structure off of the floor to avoid/reduce the damage of the initial impact. Having a foundation/base for a building has been proven to absorb the shockwave of the earthquake and leave the building more intact than if it wasn’t there. By adding this to the structure we will dampen the force of the earthquake on the building and hopefully allow it to withstand it during the test. This is the preferred option to combat an earthquake in our group due to it’s cost efficiency and effectiveness.
Research Stage
We needed to research further into our topic to find the uses, benefits and costs of different features that we were going to showcase in our building. This is some of the research I performed into the different earthquake proof features that we could possibly add.
Over the years engineers have made numerous breakthroughs relating to the earthquake resistance of buildings and different infrastructure. Some of these ideas include, extra foundations and scaffolding beneath buildings to absorb shockwaves, structural supports such as pillars and columns, as well as different reinforcements that can be seen in buildings in our society today.
Foundations:
Different supports, bases and foundations can be seen on many buildings today in our world. Engineers have designed them in order to reduce damage caused to buildings by channeling the energy of the shockwave to the stilts which the building is situated on. In order for this to work, the building is constructed on top of flexible pads which isolate the foundation from the ground. When an earthquake hits, only the base moves while the structure remains steady.
Building remains steady
Energy channeled into flexible pads
Isolates building from the ground
Reduces damage of earthquakes and shockwaves
Structural Supports:
Structural supports have been around for years and have worked effectively in reducing the damage of earthquakes by strengthening the desired structure and keeping to in position and at balance during the event of an earthquake. Supports positioned in an X have been tested and proven by both scientists and engineers to be an extremely effective means of reinforcing a building and reducing the likelihood of it toppling. Supports such as pillars and columns are effective at reducing the impact of earthquakes on taller buildings as they can be placed on almost every storey.
Reinforces buildings
More effective with taller buildings as it can be placed on every floor
Designing Our Structure
This design showcases a variety of different structural and earthquake proof features. These features include, beams for reinforcement along the sides of the structure, and a base located at the bottom. The beams will be added to the build for the purpose of stabilizing and balancing the upper/lower layers when it is in motion. It will also help to reinforce against any breakages that might occur and hopefully keep the upper layers intact if anything were to break. The base will be prioritized to reduce the energy exerted on the other layers.
Create
We have created our structure using multiple pasta sticks seen at the base, and higher amounts of blu-tac at key areas to keep the structure sturdy. This beginning prototype will require some adjustments such as making the higher levels tighter, rather than wider so that the tower will be more structurally sound, and won’t be weighed down on one side.
Our creation features a base, and multiple storeys with cross beams for reinforcement. Our research around these features helped us to better design them, and understand why throughout the creation process. All that is needed to be added is the top beams, and the 5cm x 5cm square at the top of the building.
Testing and Evaluating
During the testing phase, we discovered many flaws with our design which resulted in our structure not being as effective. Our structure being previously damaged also played a part in making our structure not as sturdy. The base managed to hold up during both the p waves, s waves as well as the surface waves. The base helped to stabilize and keep the structure on balance, however the structural supports gave out and resulted in the building starting to topple towards the end. One idea we considered but never completely finished was double stacking pasta sticks.
This would have been beneficial during the test because it would have helped to reinforce the flimsy upper layers and would have possibly stopped them from collapsing during the earthquake. Although many parts of our structure failed during the test, we were given an idea of what to change and what to keep the same in our final and improved design.
Improvements
Using prior information from our initial testing, we were able to fix and redesign different aspects of our structure so that it will be better suited for another earthquake. The 2 design features that we decided to improve on were the cross beams on the upper levels, and the reinforcement of certain areas. During the initial test, we could see that the lack of beams on the upper levels was causing the top to wobble frequently, these upper layers later collapsed from the stress of the earthquake. Our idea to improve this involved simply adding the beams in a X shaped pattern on each side all the way to the top.
From our research this was shown to be an effective and viable means of keeping the structure stable. What we realized from the test was that the pasta sticks were much too flimsy and brittle which often resulted in them snapping from the stress and force of the upper layers during the shockwave. We have decided to combat this by double stacking pasta sticks on key points to increase the sturdiness of them.
Reflection
What went well?
What would you do differently?
Our idea of including a base into our structure proved vital in keeping our structure bound and balanced throughout the duration of the testing period.
Our allocation of resources, more specifically how much blu-tac we use for each conjoined part.
Our collaborative skills as a whole improved and we were able to expertly divide the workload between one another.
Double stack the pasta and add the pasta cross beams to every part of the structure to reduce bending and shaking towards the top.
Lastly what worked well was the parts of the structure which we added the ‘X’ beams crossing diagonally. These helped to keep the structure stable and was a pro in our build.
Finish building and test earlier so there is more time to redesign and improve on the structure.
