In year 9 science we were given the challenge of creating a structure that can resist a major earthquake. This project was based on online learning website Stile. In this project we were given $60 to use on materials. With the money we had to make an earthquake resistant structure out of spaghetti and Blutack. In this challenge a 10 cm piece of spaghetti was $1 and a gram of Blutack was $1. We were given time to design, build, test and create our final structure. We tested our 1st and 2nd design to make improvements from the 1st design. The requirements for task was our structure had to have a platform with a Lego person on top, had to stay in the budget, had to use only materials from the teacher and the structure had to be 25 cm tall. To test our structures Ms Donnelly would shake the table for 10 seconds.

First my group (Jaide and Isabel) had to research strong building structures. We found that triangles were a supportive shape, so when drawing our first design we made the base of the structure a triangle. Also we realised that cross braces were important for a strong structure so that was taken into consideration. We all brainstormed ideas but we chose this design for our first structure.

Our first design, was unsuccessful as it was too complicated and we mainly used smaller pieces of spaghetti. When building this structure most of the spaghetti pieces broke, and we ended up with a ball of blue tack with spaghetti pieces sticking out. I think we should of spent more time designing and not rushed into building. When we were building the structure the base was strong and stayed together but after putting together the top it started to crumble. Since our design was not stable we didn’t get the chance to test it out but we knew we had to completely redesign our structure.

We had to brainstorm new ideas, so we did some more research and all came up with a design and chose the best one, which was Isabel’s design. Our designs had many similarities as we all wanted a triangle strong structure, with a square cross base. We took into consideration where we went wrong with the first building and other groups designs to make our final design, which is shown below.

During the building process we had to be very careful and patient to not snap the spaghetti like we originally did. We took our time and concentrated to build our earthquake resistant building.

Now that we had created our final structure it was time for it to be tested. Testing was done by the table being shaken for 10 seconds to mimic an earthquake to see if our structure was earthquake proof. Since our new design was a lot more thought out and practical it lasted the 10 seconds and the Lego man stayed on top of the platform.

During this project I demonstrated good communication as my group had to share designs and communicate with each other to make our 2nd design successful. After out first design failed we had to come together as a group to discuss a new design and all drew new designs and shared them with each other to choose the best one. My group initially found ourselves getting distracted and off track, but after our first design failed we realised we had to concentrate more in order to have a successful design completed.

In our group another capability we had to use was teamwork because we all had to contribute and share our ideas and plans, we had to listen to each other in order to come up with the best design. I believe my group members showed good communication and team work skills. We all helped in different ways, Isabel was good at making designs so we used her final design and Jaide was a good builder and used patience to help build our structure. I made sure my group stayed on track and we all helped each other out with all aspects. Overall I think my group improved through out this task and was successful in the end.