Popsicle Stick Tower Design
Identify The Need
We have been learning about different architectural structures and what it takes to make them. Now you are going to focus on studying towers, which are thin structures that are taller than they are wide.
Research and Develop Solutions
What are the three main types of towers and how do they differ?
Monopole
Self-supporting
Guyed
(From http://www.msabc.net/safety%20programs/falls%20in%20construction/Haz%20Sol/NIOH2001156.htm)
What are some constraints you must consider while building a tower?
Space, Environment, Load, Temperature, Tension, Compression, Shear, Torsional, Bending
(From ppt)
What is the major cause of damage to a tower?
Temperature, Humidity, Weather
Plugging, coking, tower base and reboiler return, Tower Internals Damage, Abnormal operation incidents, Assembly mishaps, Packing liquid distributors, Intermediate draws, misleading measurements, Reboilers, Chemical Explosions.
(From:http://www.mytclworld.com/docfiles/CROP%20NUTRITION%20BUSINESS_AMMONIA_3105pl1.pdf)
How can one create structural support for a tower?
Framework
Adding triangle shape
(From ppt)
What are some famous towers and challenges faced while building them?
Tower of Pisa: The land was sunk and tilts because of soft land.
(From http://mentalfloss.com/article/28544/why-does-leaning-tower-pisa-lean)
Twin Tower: It falls down whole building even though it was thought about hitting by airplane. So, many scientists say some problems has occurred during these towers were building.
(From: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-the-twin-towers-fell/)
How can you build your tower to withstand a heavy weight?
Adding the triangle shape.
Hard materials.
Evaluate Solutions and Choose the Best One
Key Points:
- Use triangle shape a lot (because triangle sustability is harder than square)
- Flat base to support loads (10 textbooks)
Sketch
I selected the middle one (as you can see the picture in the evaluation the solution and choose the best one section.) I made 3D modeled sketch for this selection on Google Sketch Up. This tool is really effective to make a prototype in pur group because students can check from many view points (For example: above, side, under part of the tower.) It is too hard to hundle it but also, it is really cool designing tool. 46 sticks are used for this tower.
Prototype & Model
Worked on this assignment with Nanami and Miku
This tower was mostly inspired from Nanami.
Test & Evaluate
We tested this tower to show how many textbook we can put on this tower.
Our result was 12 books. When Nanami try to put next textbook on it, the
tower was broken because they cannot support loads that is more
than 12 books.
Communicate
I think this tower was much stronger than I thought before this challenge.
I thought this tower was going to be broken as 5 textbooks on it. However,
it was not broken yet. Also, when it was finnaly broken after there are
12 books, first broken part in this tower was the part of not using triangled
shapes. From that point, I could understand that triangle shapes are really
strong to support our loards.
Redesign
If I could redesign for this tower, I would use much more triangles than
we have done to be strong enough to sustain loards. Why I think that
this is one of the point for re designing because it was too weak to support books.
REFLECTION
Why I selected this project for my portfolio is that this assignment was really fun because this assignment went really quick. I learned from completing projects that triangle shaped tower is really strong. When I finished our group’s work, I thought it will break soon. However, it has kept 12 books. After my group finished it, I thought this assignment was amazing and impressed. I had a problem with doing this project that is to use Google SketchUp. It was the second time to use it, but I still could not handle it effectively.
