Term 4 science had us researching, building, engineering, failing, then starting all over again. This interesting and engaging task had many challenges ranging from simply working together as a team to designing top grade earthquake proof structures.

The challenge we were given was to build a structure that would be able to withstand an earthquake simulation. We researched earthquake proof buildings, strong architecture shapes and designs, and then replicated them in real life. We used them in the designs of our structures we had to create out of spaghetti and blue tack. We then had to test the durability of our structures in an earthquake simulator for 10 seconds to then finally acknowledge the flaws and work on the structure in our next designs. The original version of the success criteria our designs had to meet:

• The base must no larger 30cm x 30 cm.
• Height of the build must be at least 60 cm.
• Must remain standing above 60cm after the earthquake simulation.
• $60 budget:
• $1 for every 10cm spaghetti.
• $1 for every gram of BlueTack.

Even though we didn’t have to purchase the materials with our own money we were still given a budget of $60. This was to imitate the cost of resources in real life and to teach us how to be cost efficient when designing a building. Our first design used the full budget of $60. As we didn’t plan the design before we bought the materials we just allocated 30 dollars to spaghetti and 30 dollars to BlueTack. This wasn’t cost efficient and we didn’t even have enough materials to properly create our design. Below is our first design, as you can see it has no detail or explanation, no measurements, or the amount of materials we would be using.

We began the process with researching information about techniques and methods applied in real life to give buildings a chance against earthquakes. We inserted our research into question 2 of the Stile, after doing this we did some more in depth research of specific techniques and features used in making earth quake resistant buildings.

The next part of the process involved coming into groups, assigning a role to each member, and beginning to plan and budget our designs. We created two designs, our first was clearly unsuccessful as shown above, we weren’t aware of the success criteria so our structure was only 30cm tall, and we didn’t take the process seriously and snapped all of our spaghetti. Leaving our design to be a massive clump of blue tack with tiny spaghetti strands sticking out the top, which didn’t meet any part of the design criteria. Our second design was very successful and withstood the impacts of the earthquake. We utilized the triangle shape as it is the strongest and met the height criteria, and kept under the budget. Below is the design sketch I drew for our second design.

Part of the process we went through to improve on our design was to review other groups in our class designs and see what made their structures fall. We came to the consensus that the more complicated a design the more likely it was to fall, and the designs with a triangle prism base were stronger than those with a square base. We also went through the positive and negatives of our previous design, a positive being the triangle shape was easy to work with and create a design around. A negative being that the design we chose was extremely hard to create as it was so heavy the structure kept collapsing even without the earthquake. As you can see we also took the assignment seriously and read and understood the new success criteria. – the new criteria meant the structure only had to be 25cm in height, and had to have a platform on the top to be able to hold a Lego man.

We had to completely redesign and build our structure again, however the success criteria had changed so we didn’t have to meet the 60cm height limit. This gave us an advantage as designing a 60cm structure is way more difficult than designing a 25cm structure. We utilized the triangle shape we used in our first design but changed the type of triangle we used. In our first design we used a triangular prism which was very heavy and wasn’t able to stand up on it’s own even without the impact of an earthquake, so we changed the base to a triangular pyramid and this added strength and durability to our structure. We also made our final design with 25 cm pieces of spaghetti instead of 10 cm, because the 10cm was breaking easily. 

The changes we made from the first design to the second were extremely successful in improving the durability of the building. The use of the triangular prism allowed for extra strength throughout the base to counteract for the heavy platform on top of our structure. We also added reinforcements in the bottom of the base as the square shape at the bottom was weak, allowing for even more strength to be added to our design. However part of the new criteria was to have a platform that was able to hold a lego man during the earthquake, this meant that our design was going to become heavier and made our structure weaken. We put the platform on the strongest part of the triangular pyramid base where the four strands of spaghetti meet in the middle. This was so we didn’t put any added stress onto the weaker parts of the structure meaning there was a greater chance the design was not going to collapse during the testing process.

I think our project would have improved immensely if we did more testing of our structures. We would have found out earlier that the wider and stronger the base, the more likely the design would be a success. I would have also liked to test other designs that were more complex but supposedly more efficient and stronger.

My group consisted of me and two other members, we all had our different strengths. Jazz was very time efficient and made us complete our parts of the project by certain deadlines, which kept our group on track and progressing each lesson. Jaide had lot’s of innovative and interesting ideas for the designs of our structures and how to keep them under budget. My personal strength was physically creating the design, I developed a steady hand so the spaghetti wouldn’t snap mid way through creating the structure.

Overall, the task was incredibly beneficial, and I learnt many lessons of teamwork, collaboration, and resilience. The task also expanded my knowledge of earthquakes themselves, and the interesting techniques used to counter them. In addition to all the knowledge and skills I gained from the task, my group and I had a fantastic time working together to build earthquake proof towers out of spaghetti and BlueTack.