“Never give up, stay focused and stay positive” – unknown
A quote that helps us learn and improve during everyday life and challenges. We applied this quote when faced with the challenge to design a building with pasta and blue tack that would withstand a major earthquake. With a certain criteria (is quick and easy to assemble, has a minimum height of 60 cm, has a maximum base of 30 cm x 30 cm, remains standing after an earthquake, as simulated by shaking a table for 10 seconds, is constructed from the materials supplied by your teacher and costs less than $60 to build, given the material costs listed below). Persistence, time management, and patience were put to the test.
Having a clear and set out process allows us to achieve and create a stable structure. We started by researching different real-life earthquake structures to help gain an understanding and ideas. During this process, communication was key to being able to get our ideas across and have an effective planning process. We made multiple sketches and went through the positives and negatives of each design. Once we had our design it was time to build, we were very happy that we came $10 under budget which ticked one of the success criteria. During the building process, it was important to take our time and have proactive communication skills, we did this by effectively giving out rolls like Jorji sketching out the designs, Zoe using a weaving technique with the blue tack to connect the pasta, and me putting together the overall structure. We were able to produce a strong and stable structure that withstood the earthquake this is because we added support beams that connected in the middle which absorbed all the vibrations that the building received. We used our shopping list as data to look back on to see how much we previously spent and wether we could further improve our spending habbit.
It was time to start planning in different ways we were able to further improve our design. This became a bit of a struggle because our prototype did very well when faced with the earthquake. We did come up with the following ways to further improve our design, less blue tack as it weighs down the building (20g first structure and 12-15g second structure), more support on the top singular stand of pasta, and less unnecessary pasta. When it came to building our final design it ran a lot smoother because everyone had an overall understanding of how to build it. Unfortunately, we did rush when building the structure which caused a pasta strand to snap when under the earthquake. This was caused by the less blue tack we decided to use as it offered less support to the pasta strand. This was a learning experience as it taught us that having patience is a very key factor when trying to succeed. The overall outcome for this engineering challenge was the fact that we were able to achieve all the points on the success criteria.
Teamwork allows us to efficiently achieve a challenge. The roles for each member were Zoe (equipment manager) Jorji (project manager) and Me (Speaker/Reporter). We also did playing to each other’s strengths. Zoe was very good at connecting the pasta strands with the blue tack without breaking the pasta, Jorji was very good at sketching the different designs and I helped research and put the structure together. Due to us working to our strengths we were able to create a very strong and stable structure with efficiency. When it came to solving challenges like how to further improve our structure, we all came together to voice and share our ideas and opinions so that way we all understood what we were going to do.
Good communication skills were key to producing a high-quality structure. As a team, we worked well when communicating our ideas. During a project like this, it is key that everyone in the group works together to achieve the highest quality. This way if anyone doesn’t understand anything they are able to speak up and say something. I was the role of speaker strived to seek feedback from teachers and classmates, which overall had a positive effect on the group and structure.
The engineering process is a sequence of steps that engineers use to help them develop and test potential solutions to challenges. As a group, we aimed to have the most effective engineering process to be efficient and manage our time well. Although we did our best to maintain a good process there were still some flaws that we could improve on such as, spending more time on our evaluation and the overall process. This refers to looking at your testing stage to then see what we could improve on. If done well this stage of the process can positively affect your overall outcome. If I were to restructure/change the engineering process I would add more evaluation sections. Reviewing what you are doing after each step allows you to come across errors earlier on.
How I would change the engineering process if we had all the time and resources we needed:
- (define) this refers to looking over the problem you need to solve, this would be alot easier as we won’t have to worry about any limitations. This process would still be very key as having a good understanding on what you need to achive would give you a better outcome. Having no time limit would further allow us to spend more dine defining the overall aim and having a better understanding.
- (Brainstorm) being able to generate ideas would be smoother for example we wouldn’t have to worry about being under/within $60. With less limitations the brain storming process would become become easier as again we have all the time we need to come up with different ideas.
- (research) You would be able to expand the different designs and prototypes that you can look at/research due to not having limitations. We would be able to gain research not only online but from any experts around us.
- (design) we can draft/draw many more varieties of solution with as much pasta and blue take that we need. This process could also have more time spent on it as we would be able to draft up a good idea containg as many resources as we need.
- (create) this section would be completely free and open to any creativity. We would have all the time and resources we need to create a strong and stable structure. This is the most key part as if hugly effects your overall design, this is the part the I would dedicate the most time into to create a structure of high quality.
- (test/evaluate) There would be a higher chance that this stage would run smoothly due to having more resources we would be more prone to having a stronger and stable building. The evaluate section would be easier to manage and you can make any changes you need with no restrictions.
Overall all with fewer limitations to the engineering process everything would run a lot smoother and be more open to different ideas. We would be able to spend more time on each section to ensure that we produce a structure of the highest quality.