Our Research
Information about Earthquakes
An earthquake is simple. It's a common type of natural disaster where two plates on Earth's crust, oceanic and/or continental, move. This often causes great destruction, the shaking of the ground can easily wreck buildings and streets. Earthquakes can also massively change the ground, creating deep canyons to tall mountains.
Our MaterialsAfter fiddling around with the materials, we wrote down some observations. The Popsicle sticks were strong, but brittle, and could snap easily with resistances. Straws were flexible, but were also flimsy and could bend at dramatic angles when tested. Pipe cleaners weren't very strong, but were useful when attaching materials to each other. Our Styrofoam base was sturdy. However, when sticking in upright materials, like sticks and straws, they would easily fall off without support when shaking the base. We would have to keep this all in mind when brainstorming for ideas and building our design. The picture below is not part of our actual building design, it was simply from our brainstorming stage where we could begin to play with materials.
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Information from Winsor's Engineers and BuildersOne important factor that we pulled from the talk with Winsor's engineers and head of construction was using triangles to support the walls. When attaching triangles together to use for walls, the triangles could depend on each other when the building shakes. Without the triangles, the exterior corners of the walls would not have support. In addition, they talked about having a cement, or dense block to absorb the power from the earthquake (I believe it's called a seismic block). This could be done with a small block outside on the wall, or stairs.
Swaying Buildings IdeaWe had to research a lot to think about how to build an earthquake-proof building without any adhesives, like glue or tape. Our first priority was to make our building sturdy enough, so we looked up videos on how tall building were built so sturdy. One of the key secrets of this engineering technique was swaying buildings! Many skyscrapers were built very stiff on the outside, but they had just enough flex to sway safely and gently in the wind! The idea sounded crazy, but we decided to go along with it. Our outer edges/frame was made completely with straws, but they were strong enough because of the paperclips and pipe cleaners holding them together. Our building wasn't quite tall enough to actually "sway," but the concept really helped us think more about the right way to build the structure frame.
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