My group and I were tasked to make a building out of spaghetti and blu-tack which had to withstand a simulated 3.5 earthquake for 10 seconds. The building had to be at least sixty centimetres tall and maximum base size of thirty-by-thirty centimetres. For our build, we were given sixty dollars to buy the materials. The only materials allowed in our build were spaghetti and blu-tak which was priced at one dollar per ten centimetres of spaghetti and one dollar per one gram of blu-tack. In the visual presentation that my group made we put photos for our first design to our final design, we added in the sketches and plans for each model. We also put the design techniques that are used in actual buildings around the world in the presentation.
The first model that we made was very heavy in the centre, this caused it to break also immediately during the simulated shake test. After our failed first design we decided to research more thoroughly throughout the internet for stronger building techniques. This is where we found the uses of triangles in our build, triangles distribute force equally through the structure. Another problem we encountered was the spaghetti always breaks when we were handling it on our first design, the way we improved ourselves with this problem on our second design was that we were a lot more careful when handling it.
I contributed to my group by building all the designs and working out if our design was within the sixty-dollar budget. I also researched techniques in buildings that are used to prevent earthquakes from destroying them. Our group worked very well and efficient throughout this assignment, we were able to finish our presentation and model at a fast rate as we set out different jobs/roles for each group member. This made sure everyone in the group was doing things productively.
