During term 4 of 2022, we were taught about Earth and Space Sciences. Although we grasped many different concepts involved with the topic, our primary focus was earthquakes. We were presented with the idea of how engineers create buildings that are able to withstand the effect of large earthquakes, which was then presented as a building challenge for our assessment. Our goal for this project was to build a 60cm tall building with structural integrity strong enough to be able to withstand an earthquake, using triangles as our base shape to ensure maximum support.

Our assessment involved creating a building strong enough to stand against earthquakes. Seems easy? Quite the opposite. The only resources we were allowed to use were spaghetti and blue-tack which had criteria to match with rules like a maximum base of 30cmx30cm and a height requirement. Not only that, we had a budget to stay within 60$ with each piece of pasta being $1 and 1gram of blue-tack being $1. This made it incredibly difficult to design the first draft according to the other members of my group as I was absent the first few days of the design project. They went through a process called the “50 minute design sprint”, where a time requirement of 50 minutes was set to design, create and test a building. In the end, the building made from the design sprint withheld the seismic waves caused by the shake table, however, it was not tall enough and went over the budget.

After the design sprint, we began researching ways in which engineers already create stable buildings that are common in places where earthquakes occur often. I found 2 ways in which engineers modify building, the first being by using cross braces. Cross braces located on the side of buildings help distribute the vibrations along the building evenly in order to make sure that it’s safely moving along with the vibrations. It can also send vibrations back down the buildings to soften the damage. The second design modification I found was to use triangles as a base for stability. Triangle shapes are the most stable shapes hence why they are commonly used by engineers for earthquake-proof buildings, they are also heavily featured on many famous buildings. The triangle shape is stable as compression runs along the sides of the triangle and there is tension pulling apart the bottom while the load moves down.

Using our new research, we redesigned a new building while referring back to the criteria in order to ensure we meet every requirement. We added more cross braces for extra support and used triangles as the main shape featured in our design. We also added a platform to the top in order to balance the pieces of paper needed on the criteria. We also adjusted our budget to use $15 on blue-tack (15g) and $45 on spaghetti, causing our budget to shrink twice in size than our initial design.

After building our second design, we ran into some problems. The first problem was the height factor as our building was approx. 5cm shorter than the 60cm required in the criteria. We solved this problem without going over budget by recycling broken pieces of the spaghetti to create a box shape on top of the original platform, we also broke the ends off long pieces of the building. The second problem was the amount of blue-tack required to create the building. We did not have enough blue-tack to hold the entire building together, so we broke little pieces off and instead of using a ball of blue-tack to keep it together, we would wrap the blue-tack around the spaghetti, like a ribbon almost.

After our building was finished, we had to test our design. We placed our design on the shake table and Brooke began shaking aggressively. Our model withstood amazingly, everyone shook it aggressively and it withstood every part. It ended up being approx 2.1m/s. We then added weights starting off with 100g, it withheld the weight but as we took it off, it broke one of our sticks. We then added another 100g, so 200g total, and it withheld for a few seconds before breaking only one other stick.

I believe our group did well with our collaborative skills as we ensured each person in the group had their own role and each person did their part. Using effective communication, we were able to easily design, prototype and test our building quickly and efficiently. We also used our problem-solving skills to quickly fix our spaghetti problems delicately without breaking or causing more problems to our building.

This project relates to the real world as earthquakes are common issues in places located close to plate boundaries. These significant earthquakes can cause horrendous damage and can even leave thousands or millions of people homeless as the damage done to buildings may be unfix-able. That’s why engineers and architects today are always trying to find new ways to improve the designs and structural integrity of buildings to maximise the safety of these buildings in case earthquakes do occur, as they are unpredictable.

All in all, this project was a huge success in withstanding a large earthquake. Using our collaborative skills, our group was able to create a tall building using blue-tack and spaghetti that is able to withhold strong structural integrity while being tested on the shake table.