The project

In this project we had to make a spaghetti tower with spaghetti and blutac and each gram of blutac is 1$ and each piece of spaghetti is 1$ and we had 60$ in total. The project had some requirements we had to follow the first being the base of the tower could not be wider than 30 by 30cm, the next requirement was that the tower had to be at least 60cm tall, the last requirement was that a 5 by 5cm cardboard square had to be at the 60 cm mark on the tower. The tower you have then made should be designed to withstand a simulated earthquake by the table being shaken.

The engineering process

First my group and I came up with an idea for the tower. We wanted to create something similar to a triangular lattice tower. We chose this because triangles are the strongest shape and so it can withstand the most pressure. For earthquake proof buildings the most important part is the foundation, the foundation must be secure and support the rest of the structure. Then the upper layers should use cross bracing since it’s easy to setup and it helps distribute the force evenly throughout the whole building. The next part of the engineering process is to make a model and test, we made a triangle base tower with cross bracing the whole way up to the 60cm mark. We then tested it and the base was very sturdy but the other two layers could use some improvements and we still had some money left over. We decided to add more reinforcements to the top with the left over budget and make it sturdier. On the final version the top still wobbled a bit but not as bad as before, and it managed to hold 100 grams before breaking instead of holding nothing. Some changes I would make to the process would be, having more earthquake tests to know what to improve on, having access to other materials to make the project more realistic. Improvements I would make to the tower would be, trying out different bases and shapes, designing the tower just to withstand weight and making the tower have more cross bracing.

Teamwork

At the start we had to assign roles to group members so we would stay on track and know what to do. I was the project manager because I am good at communicating and telling everyone what to do. My other group members were equipment manager, speaker and reporter. Equipment manager needs to be organized and know where everything is, speaker is the person who gets help and asks all the questions and the reporter is to make sure we are on track and keeping up to the stage we are meant to be at and not fall behind.