During this assignment the goal was to produce a sturdy and durable building using only a $60 budget where 10cm of spaghetti costs $1 and 1 gram of blu-tack costs $1. The goal of the building was to withstand a simulated earthquake, which was created by using a shake table to produce an earthquake-like effect. We also had to show our design process clearly and effectively proving that we effectively worked as a team to improve and change our original design to create a final earthquake-resistant design.
One of the first things we had to do when faced with this project was to create roles to ensure our team works effectively and avoids conflicts. Our roles for the task were, Tristan: Manager, spokesperson, reporter organise things, keep us in check. Smith: Equipment, will get equipment when needed. Rohan: Researcher, will research earthquake-resistant buildings and techniques. Everyone: Is equal in the activity, helping each other complete our deadlines and work. I believe giving everyone a role in this assignment helped with involvement, but we also worked well together when needed.
We also created a set of rules to keep us from avoiding conflict in times when things such as bringing up new ideas or changing our original idea was needed. Our rule’s main focus were on respect, listening to each other, and contributing equally to the assignment.
During the research stage of the assignment, as my role as researcher, I came across many great designs and ideas that could be incorporated into our spaghetti structure, some of these designs included making a strong base to ensure the building wouldn’t topple over during the testing, attempting to create shock absorbers (most likely through the use of blu-tack), keeping the top of the building lightweight and the bottom of the building heavy to keep it weighted to the table, having multiple means of keeping the building upright to have failsafe’s as we were bound to make errors and also crosshatching as used most famously in the design of the Eiffel tower.
Our first few designs involved things such as an Eiffel tower-like design, see source 1, and stacking multiple triangles together, neither of these structures were very sturdy and fell apart during the building process. We reviewed these buildings and ended up combining all the stronger parts of them whilst removing all the shortcomings and weak points. The last design we came up with involves a rectangular shape with a square base and top each 10cm by 10cm, knowing that the triangle is one of the strongest shapes we had the square go into a long triangle to build up height while keeping the building strong, this triangle merged on a single point which had a large amount of blu-tack and a single piece of spaghetti to reach out height requirement of 60cm. The design also included a triangular cross-hatching design at the base which made it incredibly strong, see source 2 for this design.
Our final build whilst keeping our final design fixed some building errors made such as having a weak point in which a piece of spaghetti had been broken to an uneven length leading to a lopsided building. This final building was incredibly strong and even survived being held upside-down. although incredibly strong and not moving during the earthquake, see source 3 for a video of the building during the earthquake. I can however see our structure having some problems as it has almost no flexibility to it and might split in the middle if enough force was applied through the bottom.
I think our team worked quite well together but we also each had our strong suits, I think I did a good job with the research at the start of the project to get our ideas starting, I think Tristan was very good at building and coming up with our final design and I think Smith did very good at looking at our building and coming up with unique ways to improve and make it stronger.