In this challenge, we needed to design a building that would withstand a major earthquake. We used spaghetti, blu tack, a ruler and scissors and a retractable craft knife to do so. It was 61cm tall and had a base 0f 15cm x 15cm. it wasn’t attached to the table in any way. Had to remain standing after the earthquake has finished. We couldn’t spend more than $60 dollars to do so as per the cost of materials above. We were hoping to build a tower that fits these parameters. It is important because it showed how we worked as a team and how we were able to overcome challenges that we were forced to face.
Our first design was the one below was pretty bad because we didn’t think about how all the pieces would go together and how hard it would be to put together.
Me: Equipment manager. Get all equipment ready and in the class when we need it. Main builder of the tower.
Declan: Reporter. Make sure that we have everything together and done on time.
Ben: Project manager. Make sure we understand what to do and make sure we do it.
Scarlett: Speaker. Talk to others and find out more information.
everyone had to research the best way to build a tower so it was strong. Scarlett and Ben found out the strongest building structures and I and Declan found how to build the tower and the best way to do so. we had a lot of problems when making our building and when we did we would discuss as a group to pitch different ideas and we were all respectful to each other during this process.
Ben had intelligence and good maths skills to get the measurements of our design right. He was a leader for the group who kept everyone doing the right things. I am good with hands-on things so I was the main builder of the building and the group trusted me to do challenging tasks or make changes when the building might fall over. Scarlett made sure our building made sure the spaghetti was all together and not gonna fall out of place, She also helped make it. Declan was always coming up with new ideas and improvements for the building, also he helped make the building.
We completed the engineering challenge quite well as our building was able to withstand a very large earthquake for 10 seconds or more. Through this challenge, we had to overcome different challenges such as the building being difficult and falling over and needing a new design for everything but we were able to do this as a group because we all communicated with each other and added different ideas. If we had more time we should test more and do different tests to try and make our building the strongest it could be. Our first design didn’t survive testing so we had to make a new design but the second one worked.
