Spaghetti Bridge Competition

For our last challenge project, we were assigned to create a spaghetti bridge. Our bridge had to fit a variety of criteria, including how long it was, how tall it was, and how much it weighed. My group consisted of Lindsay, Taylor, and I. Our bridge weighted 223.01g, it was 340 mm long, 80mm tall, and 120 mm wide.

1. I thought that the competition day was the most rewarding part of this project because after all the work of designing our bridge on paper, then actually making it, we were curious to know how much weight it would actually hold. It ended up holding 4500g, which was way more then we thought it would.

2. I think the strength of our bridge was our unique design. We didn't have a normal filled out base like the rest of the teams, we just had two long beams of spaghetti then smaller pieces glued on in triangular form for more support. We also had triangles along the sides, and over the top. Another strength we had was that we made our bridge fairly light, we decided we didn't need all the spaghetti we received as it wasn't going to help us in the long run anyways.Lindsay, Taylor and I worked together very well. All our ideas were combined to form one very strong design.

3. Some changes that I would incorporate on our design are:
- to add even more triangles to make the bridge even stronger
- make a stronger base, so our bridge would be more balanced
Overall, I think we had a very strong design and I was really proud of how our bridge did.

Trebuchet Test Day

When our trebuchet was first tested, we found that it was doing fairly well. It was hurling the tennis ball about 15 meters. We didn't need to make many changes on test day, except with our pouch breaking we had to make a new one. We also played around with bending the nail back and fourth, trying to make the tennis ball go further, and also to choose an angle that would benefit us the best for the accuracy competition. Overall, our test day went better than we expected it too.

Trebuchet Challenge!

For our Trebuchet Challenge, I was paired with Bevan Kliever. Our assignment was to make a trebuchet that could hurl a tennis ball across our gym of approximately 25 meters. We also had to make sure we could make it hurl the balls accurately for the accuracy part of the assignment.

Some materials we used to construct our trebuchet were:
- many pieces of wood, the size varied
- a piece of cloth (for the pouch)
- a little piece of rope (to go through the pouch)

For our procedure, Bevan started with making the base of the trebuchet out of a few pieces of wood. We then constructed the uprights (also made out of wood). We decided our throwing arm should be made out of wood too, so we attached that to the uprights. Lastly, we attached the pouch to our trebuchet. We are hoping to do very well in the trebuchet competition, good luck to all other teams!

Paige Linski.

Egg Drop Results!

Our Egg Drop Competition Day was on Friday, September 24.
Competition day was a huge success for my partner, Jonathan and I. Our egg survived the drop of five meters, and also the drop of fifteen metres off the school roof.

Here is some data for our egg drop container:

Mass:
Our container was the third lightest in the class.
Mass of egg: 56.2g
Mass of container: 113.4g
Combined mass: 169.6g

Distance of Fall:
Gym: 5m
Roof: 15m

Time of Fall:
Gym: 1.07s
Roof: 2.06s

Condition:
Gym: Unbroken
Roof: Unbroken

Dimensions:
Our box was 8 inches by 6 inches.

Earned Egg Points:
2000/113.4g(mass of container) x 10(earned egg points: 10(unbroken) 5(cracked) 1/2(unbroken)
= 176.4

Analysis:
1. I think that the most limiting restriction during this competition was the dimensions the container had to fit. If the container could have been larger than there would have been a better chance of the egg not breaking. We could have added more padding if the box was bigger which would have ensured that the egg would not drop. Also, it could have been extremely helpful to add a parachute on the top of our container. If we could have added a parachute then it would have made our container fall slower and have a softer landing, which would have helped very much.

2. I feel that the most effective part of our design was adding all the pillow stuffing inside the box. By adding all this pillow stuffing it created a lot of padding around the egg and since pillow stuffing is so light, it didn't add much mass to our container. I believe the lest effective part of our design was the box itself. We could have got a little more creative and found something that would make our container less unique, and with a lighter mass. I still thought our box was a good idea, but it could have been better if we would have found something a little lighter.

3. If we had to adapt a container to safely secure two eggs, i would just add more pillow stuffing and styrofoam inside the box. If we would have added more pillow stuffing inside the box it would stop the two eggs from hitting each other so they could have both landed safely.

Overall, this was a pretty cool project. We got to have fun while creating our container but also got to learn more about our current unit: forces. I am very happy with the outcome of our container and had a great time creating it with Jonathan.

Here is a video of our container being dropped from 5 meters in our school gym.

Egg Drop Presentation

Our container met the design specifications because it is smaller than the 25-cm * 25-cm * 25-cm requirements. We didn't use any liquids in our container, and our egg survived the drop of 5m. It was constructed with a thick cardboard box, which we lined with layers of styrofoam and bubble wrap on the bottom and along the sides.We also had a styrofoam cup inside a plastic cup holding the egg for the first drop.Then we decided we didn't need them anymore and proceeded to drop the egg without the cups, and our egg survived. We then stuffed the remainder of the box with pillow stuffing, leaving a small opening in the middle for the egg. Lastly, we secured the box shut with two pieces of duct tape.

On test day our design was successful in the dropping of 5m.

We made one modification on test day, we decided to take out the cups as they were no longer needed.

On launch day, Jonathan and I anticipate our container will do very well. We believe our egg will survive the drop because we have previously dropped it from approximately 12 meters with the egg being unharmed.

Good luck to all the other teams competing against us on Friday, September 24/2010, may the best team win!

Thanks for reading,
Paige Linski.

Egg Drop Test Day

Yesterday was our test day for our egg drop competition. We were all assigned partners for this challenge project, mine being Jonathan McLenehan. We were given a certain stairwell in our school to test out our container. For our first test we were 5 meters from the ground, we counted up to three then dropped the container with the egg inside, it took 98.5s for the box to hit the ground. After we discovered that the egg hadn't broke, we went up to 11.6 meteres and dropped it again, it took 1.58s for the box to hit the floor. When we looked inside we found that the egg wasn't cracked or broke, but the styrofoam cup that it was in was cracked a little. We decided to remove the cup from our box and see if the egg could survive without it. When we saw that the egg still remained undamaged we decided that we didn't need the cups at all. Both Jonathan and I were surprised that our contained could be dropped 11 meters without the egg being harmed. Our contained weighed 178.2g, and the egg itself weighed 58.3g. For the design of our container we had a regular box and put styrofoam around the edges and layered it with bubble wrap. We also stuffed pillow stuffing throughout the box and then put the egg in the middle of all the stuffing. We put another layer of styrofoam and bubble wrap at the top just in case the egg hit the top of the box while falling. We then closed the lid and taped it up with two pieces of duct tape.

Some materials that we used for our container are:
- box
- styrofoam
- bubble wrap
- pillow stuffing
- egg
- zip lock bag
- duct tape

Thanks for reading,

Paige Linski