The focus of our project was to create a structure, with my partner Charlie, that is 60cm tall out of pasta and blue-tac to withstand an earthquake simulation. In our lessons, we learned that earthquakes can destroy natural and man-made structures and can cause many fatalities. Many buildings lack the resistance to withstand earthquakes because their design is deficient. Through our research, we found that flexible bases really help to absorb the energy produced by an earthquake.

We encountered communication problems due to Charlie having an injury and not being at school the day we did our initial prototype. I communicated to Charlie through text to inform him about the progress I had made on our building and we solved our communication problem. When it came to the final building, we both had the same ideas and put it together fairly easily with minimal problems until we reached the testing and saw our building bend straight away due to the extra weight added.

Having both Charlie and I working on our project helped us design and contribute ideas to our final product. We both learned new collaboration skills by listening to each other’s points of view using the greatest ideas to move towards our structure.

Our final structure had an effective base however it did not quite reach the desired height of 60cm. If I was to do the project again I would have made sure to have a design before the actual building process to make sure if one of us had been away there is still a way to complete the structure. Also, to make the structure reach 60cm on both runs of the simulation I would make the structure taller and stronger to support the bending issue.