Our engineering challenge

The task we were presented with was; how can we build an effective earthquake proof building using only pasta, blu-tack and an outline of an engineering process? We first had to make a group that contained 3-4 people. Then we had to work through a design process that would help us create a model of an earthquake proof building out of pasta and blu-tack. There was set criteria that we had to follow while we were designing and building our model. The criteria is as follows; the model 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, (10cm pasta was $1 and 1g of blu-tack was $1). Lastly, we had to test and evaluate our building and propose ways we could improve it.

Our design process

An overview of our design project

We realised from the beginning that the key to the design process was to follow the template they had given us. The first thing we had to do was define our problem so we could better understand what was required. We then brainstormed ideas about what we could do for the design process.

Our Brainstorm

After we brainstormed ideas, we had to research how buildings could be made earthquake proof and propose possible solutions to our problem. We did this by going online and getting as many different ways as possible to make a building earthquake proof. The main website we used was https://www.bigrentz.com/blog/earthquake-proof-buildings. This website was amazing as it had suggestions pertaining to solving our problem with the materials we were given. We used our research to design a prototype which was our first solution to the problem. Our first design included four ways we could make a building earthquake proof and it was also in our budget range. We had created an isolated base, reinforced our spaghetti with another piece of spaghetti, used cross braces that would create opposing forces using the vibrational energy and used diaphragms throughout the prototype. Our prototype cost $60 in total.

Our first design

Our Prototype

Finally, we redesigned our prototype, corrected the flaws, and then retested it. To improve on our first design, we took away the base and scrapped the idea of an isolated base because it was too hard to replicate with pasta and blu-tack. We also added more cross braces to improve on our first design because we knew that they were very effective.

Our New Design

Our prototype in action

What Our Building outcomes were

• The first prototype was only 59cm tall, which meant it didn’t fit the success criteria.
• The first prototype was 21cm by 22cm wide, which meant it did fit the success criteria.
• The first design’s top corner fell apart, which meant that our build failed the test. (Video above)
• Our first build started to tilt after the test.
• Our second build was 61cm tall and this height meant that it fit the success criteria.
• The second build was only 10cm by 10cm wide, which meant it fit the success criteria extremely well.
• The second build held up perfectly against the simulated earthquake and didn’t break or fall apart. (Video above)
• Our second build was already tilting before the test but after it hadn’t changed how much it was tilting by.

The outcomes of our collaboration

• We communicated with each other quite well throughout the project even if some of us were sick or off school some days. We did this by creating a Teams chat so we could communicate with one another at any time.
• Our preparation was extremely organised which meant that we had everything planned out before we did it. This helped us build our prototype much more easily.
• We trusted each other with the work we had completed in our area of expertise

How to make the outcomes better by changing the process

There are many ways you could adapt or change the process to make it better. However the two main things I would do to change the process are; do the research before you start on the brainstorm and, test more designs to make a better model that will survive earthquakes. I would do the research before the brainstorm because the brainstorm is normally useless if it just guessing what an earthquake proof building should have. If you do the research and then the brainstorm, you have knowledge on the topic and the brainstorm will contain actual ways that are proven to help prevent your model from collapsing during a simulated earthquake. I would also add more redesigning phases which include testing and evaluating the new designs to make the final building’s outcomes the best they can be. I would at least do the redesigning phases three or more times because this will eliminate most of not all the flaws or limitations in your other builds to create an extremely good build.

Our collaboration

What role each of us had

Josh: He was the communicator in our group. He would ask the teacher queries we had, and he would also gather research from external sources e.g., an engineer.

Taryn: They were the designer of our group. They would take the research that the researcher found and use it to make a design that incorporated the research, and they would also have to make the design possible to build with the materials we have.

Yohan: He was the research manager of our group. He explored ways other people made buildings earthquake proof. He recorded ways you could make an earthquake proof building and passed this information to the designer.

Me (Jack): I was the project manager in our group. I made sure everyone was on task. If anyone needed help I would always be there to support them and I also made sure everyone understood what they had to do and when they had to do it.

Everyone: All of us were the builder at some point in time because the building was very hard to build for just one of us. The main builder was Taryn though because Taryn made the design come to life and had a better vision of what the prototype should look like.

Why we had those roles

Josh was the communicator because he could easily talk to people and articulate what he wanted to convey to the teacher or student we were getting help from. He was also participating in some external leadership roles that required the use of communication and was therefore quite versed in communication before he started. Taryn was the designer of the group because they are very good at picturing things, have an amazing imagination, can create great ideas and they are very good at drawing. This was demonstrated when we were unable to create a design with enough earthquake proof features until Taryn suggested that we compress everything at the sides, and it worked. Yohan was the research manager because he was sick quite a lot of the time during the project. This was a perfect fit for him because he could do work from home and send it in via teams. He also was good at this because he knew how to summarize paragraphs of information very well, so the whole group could understand why that idea would work without spending too much time reading. One problem we did face was trying to figure out ways we could distribute the simulated earthquakes vibrational energy throughout the build and because Yohan had researched so much, he showed us how to create a diaphragm (horizontal frame) to distribute the energy. I was elected project manager because we all agreed that I was very organized, thorough and could help if anyone got stuck. I was able to help people during this project because I helped transfer Yohan’s research onto a basic design that Taryn perfected. I also was able to keep people on track most of the time by encouraging them and taking over on some parts of the projects if people needed a break. Everyone was a builder in this project because it was near impossible to do the building all on your own and we all had done some sort of handy work before, so we weren’t going in blind.

Conclusion

This project was overall a success and very fun to do. All of us thought that we worked well together and had created a design that could survive many earthquakes to come. We had clearly learned how to use a design process to complete a project.