For our final science assessment this year we were posed an Engineering Challenge. This challenge consisted of a team of three – designing, constructing and testing a small scale quick, and easy to assemble building that is able to withstand a simulated major earthquake. This had to be on a budget of under $60 with only resources provided by our teacher and had to have a maximum 30cm x 30cm base and a minimum height of 60cm. To succeed the building had to withstand a simulated major earthquake, whilst fitting in all the requirements and stay standing for 10 seconds after the simulation.
Overall, we ended up succeeding. Our building measured at 64cm tall and had a base of 25cm x 25cm fitting in the size requirements easily, we also only spent $59.5 meaning that our building fitted in all the requirements. All that was left was the test, as you can see below this test went great. As we can see in the video below the building survived the P waves very easily, the support beams helped distribute the force and make the tower sway with ease, we can also see that it survived the S waves easily as well, the diagonal cross braces connecting the antenna and the base played a huge part in this, they helped distribute the force from the top sway of the tower and help it spread to and between the base through multiple points rather then all the force moving through one focal point to get from the antenna to the base.
Teamwork –
To help us succeed in this process teamwork was essential, you had to be able to know your teammates were able to pull their weight and hold some of yours if you needed it. My team consisted of Noah, Anthony and Myself, our team worked really well and efficiently and was able to complete the challenge with ease. This was due to us having established roles that helped us multitask and be productive, our roles were; Noah – Equipment Manager, Mitch – Project Manager, Anthony – Speaker & Reporter. We chose these roles based on what each team member contributed, Noah contributed hands-on skills and was good with math, Anthony knew how to research and had a lot of general knowledge about the topic and I contributed problem-solving skills and hands-on skills ( Hands-on skills meaning we had steady hands and weren’t going to break the pasta as frequently). Noah was responsible for making sure that the materials needed for the task are available and that everyone cleans up after each session, whilst I was responsible for making sure that everyone understands the challenge and keeps the team on track and Anthony was getting help from the teacher, other class members or outside experts and making sure that the final presentation is ready by the deadline. Assigning these roles really made the project much easier as everyone wasn’t scrambling to remember everything and everyone knew who to ask certain questions if they needed it. Outside of these Anthony and I thought of creating different roles so that we could be more time effective meaning we would make sure we had done every part of the task to our best ability by the deadline and we could make the most use of all our personal skill assets. These roles were Builders and Written work, Myself and Noah were on building the Tower as we provided hands-on skills, this meant we were responsible for prototyping, sketching and building our earthquake-proof building, whilst Anthony provided research skills and the ability to use words well was on written work, filling in questions and doing research on what we could do better and what other engineers had done. With these roles it meant we could be completing two components of the task at once, Noah and I could be building the earthquake-proof building whilst Anthony could be doing the written work, overall optimizing our time.
The Engineering Process –
Through the process of constructing our earthquake-proof building, we had to go through the engineering process. The engineering process consists of Defining, Researching, Designing, Creating, Testing and Evaluating. Each of these elements plays a crucial part in making sure your building is the best it could be.
Defining – Defining meant describing and specifying what the challenge/problem was and understanding better what the goal you were working towards was and how you intend to succeed at it. In our case it was to design, construct and test a small scale quick, and easy to assemble building that has a maximum 30cm x 30cm base and a minimum height of 60cm, that is able to withstand a simulated major earthquake on a budget of under $60 with resources provided by our teacher. The intended outcome is that we will build our building in a square pyramid shape as it is proven to be the most strong shape as everything supports itself, for us to succeed this shape would hopefully withstand a simulated major earthquake in all the requirements and stay standing for 10 seconds after the simulation.
Research – Research was finding and gathering information on the challenge and seeing what engineers in the past may have used to solve similar challenges. In our case, this was researching earthquake-proof buildings and finding out the major factors that play a part in them being earthquake-proof, such as; Stiffness, Use of cross braces and the use of triangles
Designing – Designing is sketching up detailed potential prototypes that you plan to be effective and successful in the challenge and explaining why. It is also important to get every detail on it so that when it comes to construction it’s easy to build. As seen below this is the Final prototype that we got too, we have specified everything we need on there to make construction easy and have calculated the total cost of it.
Create – The creating process is just creating and building your finished prototype in a to scale model. For us our Final prototype didn’t go to plan this caused us to have to modify our building. When we put the drawn design and made it into the actual scaled structure, we found that there were a lot of issues in our design. The building wasn’t stable at all when we built it. The main reason we suspect for the building to be continuously falling over was that the initial pyramid the rest of the building was on top kept on buckling and going inward into the centre, instead of standing upright. To accommodate for this issue, we changed the final design and removed the rectangular part in the middle.
Test – Testing is recording the outcome of the prototype during testing, describing the effectiveness, comparing the outcome of the prototype testing to the success criteria, and evaluating the effectiveness of the prototype with reference to the success criteria. Our model was quite effective during testing. It stayed upright and didn’t fall over once, yet there was a bit of failure with regards to the building staying intact. Some of our building split apart at the base, and most of the top antenna parts did move below their original height (the antenna part does not pose as much of a problem, as the building did stay above 60 cm). The success criteria claims that we must have our building stay above 60cm after 10 seconds of earthquake testing, while also being within the budget of $60 and not being attached to the testing platform in any way. Our building stayed above the 60cm mark after 10 seconds of testing so it passed that test. Our building was not attached to the testing platform in any way, so it passed that test too. The only issue with our building with ensuring it fit the entirety of the success criteria was that it was definitely not within the $60 budget range. Our building was more likely around the $80 mark, mostly because of the sheer amount of blu-tack we used. The overall effectiveness of the prototype model was very good. As explained before, it did withstand the earthquake and stayed standing above 60cm after 10 seconds of the simulation. There was nothing else that the prototype did that made it ineligible for passing the success criteria in terms of the actual testing. The only issue was going over the budget.
Evaluate – Evaluating was identifying aspects of the prototype that can be changed, describing how these changes could be made, explaining how these changes can help and evaluating the success of the design changes through second testing. We evaluated the advantages and disadvantages of our building, these being –
Advantages: It was grounded well, meaning that force was dispersed back into the ground which led to the building staying above 60cm, at the top of the building, the spaghetti was reinforced making it not going to snap meaning it could brace the sway of the tower and distribute the force between all the pieces and reinforce each other and it was braced well and had a wide base to support the movement at the top without leaving the ground.
Some of the disadvantages were: The strength of the spaghetti wasn’t reliable as we only used one piece making it unreinforced meaning it snapped easily, the excessive amount of blu tack put a lot of weight on the building making the building already have more pressure than needed due to gravity and the use of a lot of blu tack wasted a lot of our money in our budget that we could’ve used for extra spaghetti to reinforce.
Improve – Improving is finding solutions to the disadvantages and utilizing these solutions to make our next building better. For us these were;
Using less blu-tack – For our new design, we have to use less blu-tack. The amount of blu-tack we used made us go way over budget, meaning we did not comply to the success criteria. Our building was not eligible for marking or consideration of it’s success. The blu-tack was also a contributing factor to the weight and pressure being put on the building, causing some spaghetti pieces to snap and disconnect with each other. The amount of blu-tack we used wasn’t needed either, as most of the blu-tack did nothing to connect and stabilise the building. By reducing the amount of blu-tack used in the building, we won’t go over budget making our building eligible for marking. Reducing the amount of blu-tack will also help to put less weight and pressure on our building, meaning it has a lower chance of collapsing and going under the 60cm minimum height.
Reinforcing pieces of the building with more bunches of spaghetti – One of the issues with our prototype was that the spaghetti pieces found in the pyramid structure were snapping and disconnecting from the sections where they were stuck together by blu-tack. The reason for destruction was from weight being applied, and also from the fact that we hadn’t made the spaghetti pieces strong enough, as we never bunched them up. By reinforcing the pieces of the building that snapped, we are reducing the chances of the pyramid base that our antenna sits on from collapsing.
Adding cross braces to the pyramid at the bottom – The main concept that we looked at the most yet did not implement into our design was cross bracing weaker parts of our building. The explanation for why it will improve our building is quite simple. Cross braces in our pyramid will assist the spaghetti pieces with relieving some weight and pressure off of our foundations.
Spaghetti pieces come out and support the antenna – Some of the concerning parts of our building also came from the antenna at the top. Although the antenna did stay upright above 60cm during the prototype testing phase, we found that if the earthquake was more severe, the building would not stay above 60cm. To enhance the stability of the antenna, we could add small pieces of spaghetti to extend out from the pyramid that would provide a foundation to antenna for more strength. The added strength would guarantee the antenna would stay upright.
Pyramid becomes larger – Although the size of the pyramid was reliable and valid, some further changes could be made. By simply making the pyramid base larger, we could make the weight and pressure be more spread out and less compact and destructive.
We can see these changes below in the new prototype below:
Using the engineering process overall made completing this challenge much easier as we knew the direction of the challenge, what to do next, and understood how to be successful. Although this process wasn’t perfect and could have some improvement. Something that they could improve on is adding a discuss or share step after the first prototype testing, this would mean that groups could share with others what went well and what didn’t in their prototype building. If this step was introduced it could help everyone be more successful as there would be more ideas and people could incorporate changes that made other people successful and also avoid putting ineffective changes into their new designs. This would save a lot of time and resources and make it easier for everyone to succeed.
Another thing that we would change is not using as much time at the start researching and answering questions altogether but to get Noah and me to start building a lesson or two earlier as when it came down to building our first prototype we only had one lesson to do so. Due to this, it meant that we were rushing to get it completed and not putting our full effort into making sure it was perfectly built, this meant that it was as structurally integral as it could’ve or should’ve been. If we had made this change it would have made our building much more sturdy as it would be built correctly and not rushed. This is because we didn’t have time to get the exact correct placement of the spaghetti, this meant that our calculations were off as we couldn’t get the exact angle we were planning for on our prototype meaning we weren’t at the height that we were supposed to be, causing us to have to improvise. If we could do this again and make this change it would be built correctly and not rushed, this would’ve made it more structurally integral and would’ve held up better in the test.
Overall this challenge was really fun to take part in and I enjoyed the whole process. My group ended up succeeding and building an earthquake-proof building within the success criteria through the use of the engineering process and teamwork.