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Design Engineer |
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| Animals and insects build structures for
many reasons. A good example of good engineering is that done by a
honeybee. Honeybees as a group of bees put a lot of effort into
making there hives. The small hexagon shapes inside the hive help
make the hive stronger. Adding small shapes between to pieces of
paper help make the paper stronger. Cardboard is a good example of
that paper reinforcer. Another example is spider webs,
spiders
begin their webs by putting a longer piece form one place to another
then from the bottom of that piece they but a support piece, then
more supporting pieces. They add up all the support pieces and they
get that one big structure. Some designs that might help your
project stay up and not collapse are cylinders, triangles, hexagons,
etc. I interviewed Jon Gildner teh EA to the president of Gildner
Incorporated. He said that the type of designs that hold the most
weight are a design with a wide base and equally distribuated
support. The best way to keep rigidity in a structure is by making a
triangle. To keep the structure together use lots of glue and don't
bend the folders more than needed. Also take your time when building
the structure and the blue prints for the structure. Our structure
was suitable to meet the height and weight criteria, it was 9.5
inches high. Some of the benefits of our design was that it was a
triangle. Triangles don't mover out of place, lose their shape,
easily. Also we had another triangle inside the larger one and then
filled the extra space with cylinders. The walls of our outside
triangle weren't very sturdy, which made our structure not as
strong. Another thing is, is that we had two parts to our structure.
I think it might have been stronger if we glued the inside shape
into the outside. I would have made the sructure more even, with
stronger outside walls, and I would have glued the inside part in to
the main triangle. Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cushioning
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Lions
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| tension- when something is being pulled. tension may cause things to break apart. |
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compression- when something is being pushed together. when putting the weights on the project it may cause the project to collapse. | |
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Our structure held 405 pounds. |
