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| Bees would be considered wonderful engineers, they discovered one of the strongest geometric structure. They're "honeycomb" structure supports all of the bees and all of that sweet honey wrapped in wax. The bees also gave us the structure that uses "columns" or hexagon shapes that run throughout the structure. other organisms such as the spiders use tension with they're spider web. The triangular shapes are used to support the catching of the prey. Only if they used some kind of double layer or some corrugation like the bees. Cardboard uses corrugation to make the walls of boxes sturdier. They are designed to absorb shocks from the pressure of what is sitting on it or what it is holding. so both tension and compression come out of corrugation. A good design to absorb shock from the weights being slapped onto the structure of ten manila folders would to use the corrugation and to spread the shock throughout the structure. A way to do that is to use multiple columns to support the weight. What I found online was that cylinders have the most support for a structure. So my group decided to use a cylinder. |
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| The Interview: I interviewed my dad, the director of facilities management for District 87, and I asked him some questions my group had come up with. I asked him which shape would be best to use, and well, he said that it would be best to use a honeycomb-like structure. "Then to support it," my dad said," just build up cylinders in the middle to spread the weight throughout the structure." He also said that compression was the way to go, not tension. With conclusion to keep the structure short as possible. I asked him how the structure the carry the weight. He responded my telling me to distribute the weight evenly, and to support it, build around the perimeter evenly to balance the structure. The last advice he game me was to build the structure symmetrical to equalize the balance through the structure. |
Reflections: My teams structure was tall enough and was not wide enough, it was too slim and an irregular shape. That is the only downfall of our project. The benefits is the corrugation between the walls and the tightly packed cylinders running throughout the structure. The one true weakness in our structure is the balance. The shape was irregular and was not symmetrical like it should have been. The weights slid off instead of crushing it. If I could go back and redesign the structure, i would definitely re-shape the structure and make all sides symmetrical. That way, the balance on each side would have been symmetrical and the structure would have held twice as much weight as it did. |
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