Our challenge is to design and create a structure using spaghetti and blue tac to withstand the force of a simulated earthquake for 10 seconds. As a group, our intended outcome is for the building to absorb the impact with minor to no damage at all.
It needs to be resistant to earthquakes while following the measures of being quick and easy to build, with a minimum of 60 cm high, 30cm x 30cm max base all within a budget of $60.
The building needs to be able to withstand a major earthquake. This is important because people need quick and easy ways to build a stable structure when a major earthquake occurs.
Our research
Our Original Design
Our design consists of a lot of cross bracing in the base, as in our research we discovered that cross bracing is a good way to keep a building together and stable after and during an earthquake. We also added some extra support halfway up the base of the building just for some extra support. The roof of our building is also quite stable, I believe that it may wobble a little bit due to the fact that it is not as supported as the rest of our building. Overall I predict that outbuilding will survive the tests and come out with little to no damage.
Costs:
Spaghetti: 387 cm ($38.7)
Blue Tack: 10 grams ($10)
= $48.7
Our Model:
Resluts of our tests:
There was no damage caused to our building.
We tested our building on the three different types of earthquakes, convergent, transform and divergent.
Advantages and disadvantages of our building:
Advantages:
Our building was very cheap for us to build as we were under budget.
Our Building survived three catastrophic earthquakes making it very structurally strong.
Our Building met the building requirements of a maximum of 30cm by 30cm base and a minimum height of 60cm.
Disadvantages:
Our building was pretty small as the base was only 13cm by 11cm.
Our building was not easy to assemble as it was a very tedious thing to build because of all the little pieces of pasta.
Our building may have been very strong structurally but it was quite oddly shaped making it not very appealing to look at.
Our improved design:
We added extra support on the side of our building because it supports the upper parts of our building as this area of our building has the least amount of support. These changes are drawn in yellow.
We used an additional 100cm of spaghetti and 1g in blue tac.
All up our improvements cost $11.
This made to total costs of the original build and the improvements come to $59.
Testing of our new design:
When we shake tested our building again, there was no damage made to the structure of the building. This time the roof did not shake as much as it did the first time as there was more support as the new pieces of spaghetti were supporting it leaving the roof and building with no damage done.
Communicating:
Our building we believe was very strong structurally. When we did our three tests using three different types of earthquakes (converging, diverging and transform), our building did not break and the structure did not even shake it. The whole thing stayed together and strong, the only thing that did move a little bit was the roof. This was because it was the thing that we tried to make more stable when we did our improvements.
Some big changes that we could have made to our engineering process are making sure that everyone was on the same and making sure that no one was left behind on the stile questions. This would have made sure that we were all ready to start building at the same time. This would have made it easier to get our shake test done and we could have spoken about it in lost more depth, instead of people having to run off and finish off their unfinished questions. We all definitely all should have been on the same page about what design we were creating. We started out with one design but changed it that day we started building. When we drew up our first design everyone put that in their stile but when we drew up the other one not everyone knew to change it. This meant that half of the group had a different design.
Teamwork:
During this investigation, our group really tried our best to make sure that everyone was having a go at everything, but also making sure each person was taking charge of what tasks they were responsible for.
Aiden:
Financial manager – responsible for financial matters for the team, keeping track of money spent using a spreadsheet. When we were all having issues working out how much our entire building costed Aiden was really helpful as he just took charge of working that out, instead of the other three of us all struggling with it. This turned out to be really helpful for the group as it was done really quickly and the group didn’t have to ponder over the cost of our building.
Ayden:
Equipment manager -makes sure that the materials needed for the task are available and that everyone cleans up after each session. Ayden was great at getting the materials for our group. He made sure that we had everything we needed for our build and for out improvements. He also threw some really good ideas in when we were drawing up our design that was very beneficial to the structure of our building not collapsing/ breaking when we did our tests.
Georgia:
Technology director – responsible for collecting/presenting internet research data, creating a PowerPoint Presentation. I feel as if I was pretty good at the actual building and designing part of this investigation. I feel like I had a few great ideas that got the building to the requirements and made sure that it did not crumble/break when we did our three tests.
Ruthie:
Project manager – makes sure that everyone understands the challenge and keeps the team on track. Ruthie was really good at getting the rest of our group’s attention when we all needed to do something, when someone needed help or when something was wrong that the rest of us didn’t notice. She was also great at suggesting ideas for our design, for our improvements and what pieces of spaghetti was uneccessasery for our design or our improved design.
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