Earthquake Structure Challenge

Research Essay

In order to build a sturdy and good building, you would need to have a plan, it would need to balanced, and sturdy and stable. In our experiment, we were assigned to create a earthquake-proof building made out of spaghetti. We had to create our building with glue, clay and spaghetti noodles. We first started off trying to create four pillars heading upwards. And this worked for a while so we continued. And we started off with no plan so we weren't exactly sure about what we were doing. Plus, we were running out of time so we decided to just go with it. Everyone around us looked like they were having no trouble at all. Then we figured out that we should have planned it beforehand in order for us to create a successfull building. So we created a plan (a sketched diagram) of how we could do our building. So we created a plan and this made it 10 times easier than making a building without a plan because now, we knew exactly what we were doing.

Then after we made our plan, we started on making our building sturdy and stable for it to stand as long as possible. So by doing this, you would need to glue the clay down onto the cardboard. So we added down the four different pillars making it the shape of a square heading upwards. And in order to make our building sturdy and stable, we glued down the four pillars and stuck them down with a whole bunch of clay so that it would stay down. We expected this to work. And we also added extra clay to the four pillars. We added clay in the middle of each pillar there was so that it would make it more stable than it already was. Also so that our building wouldn't tople over.

After making our building sturdy and stable, we would need our building to be balanced out equally. We were working our way upwards when we realized that our building was slanting to the right. We figured out why this was happening and we realized that our building wasn't really balanced. So we added a fifth pillar in the middle of the four different pillars making it sturdier and more balanced out. We concluded that this really helped us with our experiment and went on from there. So the three main things that you need to create a successful building is to plan ahead, balance it out, and make it stable and sturdy for your building to be ready with whatever comes its way.

Pictures of Our Building

Analysis

Analyze your tower in a well-written paragraph. What went right and what went wrong? What would you do differently? How did you group function as a team?

In our project for the Earthquake Structure Challenge, some things went right and a lot went wrong. For the things that went right for us was how we set everything up. We were building up our building and it was going well with everything in place and it was standing. For the things that were going wrong was our planning. We didn't plan ahead which resulted in our tower not being planned beforehand and it wasn't right. Another thing that went wrong with our tower was that it was not balanced correctly and it was leaning to one side. We had added too much clay on one side and not too much on the other. And last but not least, since we did not plan ahead, we had nowhere to place our buidling blocks and we had to "wing"it in the end. Those were the things that went right and wrong with our challenge.

Something that I would have done differently in this project would be to plan ahead and make sure things are going well in the first place rather than going on with it. Another thing that I would have done differently in this project would be the balancing. I would have made out the tower a little differently so that it would be able to balance better.

I think that my group functioned as a team. We functioned as a team because each of us was doing a different thing and we all had something to contribute and to say to add on to our challenge. We all pitched in our ideas for how we should structure this tower and how it should be done. That is how we functioned as a team.