The challenge we were given was to design and build an earthquake resistant building that should be able to survive an earthquake with minimal damage. We only had spaghetti and blue tack to achieve this challenge. We were given $60 to spend on the spaghetti and blue tack. The spaghetti costed $1 per piece and the blue tack costed $1 per gram. The building had to survive a 7 magnitude earthquake. The building had to be maximum height of 60cm and a maximum base of 30 by 30cm. My group was Katie, Salma and I, we had to do specific research on how to make our building stay up during the earthquake. We went through the engineering process to achieve our goal of an earthquake resistant building.
Design brief
- 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
- costs less than $60 to build, given the material costs listed below
Materials
You can only use the following materials to build your model:
- spaghetti ($1 per 10 cm)
- Blu Tack or plasticine ($1 per gram)
- scissors or retractable craft knife
- ruler
Reflecting on the engineering process
The first topic we had to work on was define. We had to figure out what we were actually doing and define the challenge we had to face. As a group we had to make sure we knew what we were doing and then talked about what we could do to achieve our goal of an earthquake resistant building. The second topic we had to think about was research. As a group we had to research how we can made the building earthquake resistant and how we can minimise the damage it takes from the earthquake. We found many components we could add to the building and wrote them down. The third topic we had to think about was design, we had to design our first draft of what we think would be the best way to achieve our goal. We made many sketches of what would be the best design for our challenge. The fourth topic was create which was when we started to create our drafts and where we figured what improvements we could’ve made. The fifth topic was test which was when we tested all our designs to see if our buildings could survive the shake table. From that we checked the last improvements we could add to our building from our tests before.
What were our challenges and how did we face them
There were many problems that we faced during the 3 designs of each building, the most frequent problem that kept coming up was the density of the pasta and the different shapes that were added into the building. Some big problems we faced while sketching our first design was the type of base we were going to use. For our first design we used a square base thinking that would be the best shape to achieve our goal.
Our first plan didn’t survive which meant we had to go back to the planning stage and figure out how to improve our first design. Our first design consisted of long and easily broken pieces of spaghetti which wasn’t working. The pieces of spaghetti were very straight which helped them break easier and fall over. We also didn’t put many cross braces on our first design meaning there was no extra support in the middle of our building.
We went back to our first plan and did more research on how to improve the building so it could resist the shake table. With more research and planning we realised a triangle base would be the smartest way to achieve our end goal since a triangle is the strongest shape. After more trials we decided to add more cross braces and several triangles through out the building to create more stability.
Improvements we needed:
- better structure
- more cross braces
- a bend in the spaghetti
- structure in the middle of the building which is where all the spaghetti meets
Collaborate
Everyone is the group played an important role in the success of the building. Katie did the bulk of the research for the group and helped with the idea for what we were going to do. Salma did most of the brainstorming and helped with the building of the tower. I did bulk of the building and contributed with the ideas and improving our design. During the planning period, as a group we went through many different ideas and plans of what we were going to build. As a group we got frustrated with our building because it wasn’t going the way we wanted or planned for, the spaghetti kept breaking whenever we tried to add it to our building. We fixed this y going slower and being more careful with each piece of the spaghetti to make sure we didn’t brake any pieces we needed. Our group worked very well with how we communicated with each other and got out ideas onto the table.
Things we needed to improve on:
- time management
- efficiency
Our final product
