For science this term we had to do a project where we had to construct an earthquake resistant building that can withstand P waves and S waves while following the engineering process.
The building also had to fit specific criteria for it to be successful, which were:
- Has a minimum height of 60 cm
- Has a maximum base of 30 cm x 30 cm
- Has a flat platform on the top level of at least 5 cm x 5 cm
- Remains standing after an earthquake, as simulated by shaking a table for 10 seconds
- Is constructed from the materials supplied by your teacher
- Costs less than $60 to build, with 1 spaghetti equally $1, and a gram of blue tack being $1
Process
The very first thing we did as we started this project was a 50 minute design sprint where we had to make a rushed prototype of the building without any planning before hand that also had to fit the success criteria. After the 50 minutes were up we had to see if it could withstand the simulation of an earthquake, more specifically, P waves and S waves. Me and my groups building, we were able to make a building that was able to meet the majority of the success criteria, but when it was time to test how it would withstand an earthquake, it ended up collapsing due to lack of support.
After the design sprint we got split up into our actual groups, with the people in my group being Nicole Li and Dylan Sikorski. We all researched features of earthquake resistant buildings and found out about cross bracing which is used in multiple earthquake buildings in the real world. cross bracing is a system utilized to reinforce building structures in which diagonal supports intersect it.
After all the research we sketched out a rough design which incorporated all features we researched about into the design, one of the problems though was the budget since we didn’t know how much spaghetti and blue tack we needed since it was hard to guess solely based on the diagram we used.
Testing & Creating
We ended up using our double to construct our building, with us having no set backs or any major problems with the construction. The end product was something sturdy and stable. We then tested how the building would withstand the earthquake simulation. the earthquake simulation tested how the building will withstand P waves and S waves, we also tested how the building would withstand surface waves but this wasn’t marked. In the end our structure was able to withstand all the earthquake simulation with it only being damaged after the surface wave simulation but it was still standing up right at the end.
Challenges
One of the challenges we faced was that when we measured the height of our building it was 2cm below the high requirement (60cm), with the top of our building being slightly slanted and not even so it didn’t meet the criteria for height which was a bit disappointing. One of the challenges we faced along with way was our group members all had conflicting schedules, so communicating outside of school was a bit challenging since we were all busy doing something outside of school, but we all communicated well in class, with us organising what we were going to do and what our jobs were, with one job being editing someones draft answer for the stile question or helping everyone stay on track and complete the work given, which helped us complete our work quickly and efficiently.
Conclusion
Overall this project has really helped me have a better understanding of earthquakes and how much thought and effort goes into constructing buildings that will help protect and keep civilians safe, with different features in a building being able to drastically improve a buildings chances of surviving an earthquake. I also was able to improve and better my collaboration, communication, and leaderships skills with this project. This was a really fun project and I was able to learnt a lot of new stuff because of this project but not only that this project was really enjoyable and I had fun working together with my teammates.