Throughout the whole of the year, we have been learning through our teamwork, research, trial, and error and creative thinking skills, and this final project has really been an exciting conclusion to the year for us all.

We were given the task of creating a building that would be able to survive through the challenge of a makeshift earthquake. Using the materials of spaghetti, BluTack, and rulers to create this building was one of the main challenges. We were given a price budget of $60 to buy the material ($1 per/ 10cm of spaghetti and $1 per/10 grams of BluTack.) During the prototype and final build process, we overcame many challenges and changed our design many times.

A basic outline of the requirements are as follows:

• A base of no larger than 30cm x 30cm
• Height of 60 cm minimum
• Stay standing during the 10 second earthquake
• Remain in the budget ($60)

We firstly sat down and compared our ideas coming together for a first draft of what our build will represent. Working together we were able to research together and successfully find options for how our build could look. We found options for how we can achieve a stable build then worked out the most cost-efficient option (totaling $59.50) for our earthquake-resistant build.

After we drew up a diagram and spoke with Miss Donnelly about the equipment we finally started prototyping and quickly realised our build was not going to be as efficient or cost-effective as we thought. Creating a wide list of possible options and not being successful with any of them, we resorted to making a build quickly at the very end of the lesson. This build ended up being our final idea. It had a triangular base with stronger side supports and a flat platform top.

Some of the main challenges we faced were:

• Spaghetti breaking – spaghetti broke making us loose materials and our designs breaking
• Not standing up straight – as spaghetti isn’t very solid and bends easily our builds often ended up being tilted side ways and not stable.
• Our group got very easily distracted

The overall task was very engaging and enjoyable. I enjoyed working in groups and having the ability to learn through failure. We learned all about the current options implemented for architecture and earthquake prevention, but more than that we learned about how to structure our own research and how to create something of our own based on said research. In addition to all, we learned about the task itself we also had a great time putting together our earthquake-proof buildings.