During this project, I worked in a group with Rohan Balloch and Smith Blaxell, we called ourselves the Irish Idiots because globally we found Ireland had some of the worst infrastructures and therefore we were calling ourselves the worst of the worst. We worked as a group to design, prototype, and build a tower out of spaghetti, our task was to build a tower out of spaghetti that was within a certain budget we had to construct a building that was under 30×30 cm base and above 60 cm in height. the budget was $60 and spaghetti was $1 and the blu-tack was $1 per gram.

We ran into a few immediate problems most prominent of which is one of our members was away for the majority of the time, and the other seemed a bit lost, so it was up to me to try to make something out of this. I took the role of a leader to try to keep everything under control, once we sorted out roles and jobs Rohan was just a researcher so he could help out even in his situation, smith was helping with equipment and construction and I was organizing, completing and making sure everything was ready by the due date. We established a few ground rules including:

1. Listen to ideas,

2. Contribute equally,

3. If you disagree, disagree respectfully,

4. Set deadlines and achieve them

Our group leaped into action, we were a bit slow initially but after a week and a bit of planning we began construction, our initial plan was to make a building similar to the Eiffel tower, that way with the strong wide base and the thin peak we maximize height and strength while minimizing cost. What we made fell apart almost instantly, the building was collapsing on itself before the earthquake could get to it. see our design below:

We decided to switch up our design because we quickly saw that we didn’t have enough supports to make something like a pyramid. I proposed a change to a square structure with triangular cross-hatching. The next day when our team was whole again we built our improved model and then tested it, to simulate an earthquake we put the building on a shake-table and beat it senseless and then recorded the damage so when we remodel we know what to change.

Our improved design was extremely sturdy but we noticed that it was sloppy, and due to the uneven structure there were “pressure points” where it was starting to fall apart, we rebuilt our model but with exact perfect measurements and we cut down on unnecessary blu-tack to minimize cost, see our updated design below:

during the new test the results showed themselves as clear as day, we were able to turn it upside down and smack the bench mat without it falling or even having any damage. I do not think with the same resources and time we could have made a better building. The teamwork in this project was most important even though we had a bit of trouble getting started we managed to pull together a strong building and also helped strengthen the bonds within our group. Onto strengths: Smith was resourceful, not to mention great at putting forward ideas, Rohan was very good when it came to construction and meaningful research. It felt good to be leading this group scrappy as it was, to the success we now revel in. To conclude this project was only possible due to the teamwork and unique capabilities that every member of the Irish Idiots put forward and all of the work we put in as a team.