Introduction
Earthquakes are destructive natural disasters that occur in many areas across the world. This has lead engineers to find solutions that can help buildings withstand earthquakes. So in this project we were challenged to construct a tower from spaghetti and blue tack which can withstand seismic waves. We also had to create it 60cm tall and with a budget of 60$, 1 piece of spaghetti was 1$ and 1$ per gram of bluetack.
Collaboration
My groups consists of Sienna, Zoe and I, we were each assigned as project manager who makes sure everyone understands the challenge and keeps people on task, equipment manager who gathers all equipment need for the pretotypes and speaker who seeks help.
project manager: sienna, strengths: organisation, understanding peoples needs and helping other people, sienna helped drawing designs for the project.
equipment manager: Claire, strengths: organisation, i helped by researching ways to help our design.
speaker: Zoe, strengths: asking for help, receiving input from other people.
Research
We started this project by researching ways engineers have built earthquake resistant buildings. I found that these 3 key methods have been used to help tall buildings stand up better to ensure there is greater safety and stability.
- strong foundations: Tall buildings need to distribute the immense weight to counteract each other. Engineers often use techniques like pile foundations and to anchor the structure securely. Piles are long, columns made of materials like concrete, steel, or timber. They are driven or installed into the ground.
- Reinforced Materials: High-strength materials like reinforced concrete and steel are commonly used in the construction of tall buildings. Reinforcement bars and mesh are added to concrete to improve its strength while steel frames provide structural stability.
- Structural Design: Engineers carefully design the building’s structural framework to distribute loads evenly and resist external forces such as wind and seismic activity. Techniques like moment frames, shear walls, and trusses are used to provide stability. moment frames are used in building construction to resist large loads and provide structural stability.
engineers construct tall and large buildings.
Design
After researching we found the best ways that can help our tower reach the height of 30cm while resisting seismic waves, were to build a very strong base and we used smaller, already broken spaghetti pieces to help support the larger pieces. We used a triangle base as it is the strongest shape and we built up making a triangular structure.
Create
After designing the best way we thought would help our tower withstand an earthquake we started building. Starting of by making a triangular base stuck on the mat we built up as far as we could without it falling over. We realised the second base was the most unstable so we used broken or cut pieces of spaghetti we had left over and used them to help stabilise our tower. The most difficult part was trying to figure out how the top of our structure will be. We had to place a 5×5 piece of cardboard on the top and since we were using a triangular structure we had to create a small base to hold the cardboard.
Evaluate
our final model/test performed very well as it withstood the simulated earthquake, the triangle structure and using smaller pieces of spaghetti to support helped very well. After the test when we put weights on top, our design withstood 50grams which i think was very good. This proved our design not only worked well to stay up but it was also strong and at the end our tower was 33cm tall.