Materials Engineer

In this project our design team has to make a structure made of ten folders and glue to withstand as much weight as possible.
There are five different basic grades of paper:
Bond-used for letterheads, business forms and quick printing jobs
Offset/Uncoated Book-most common sheet for offset printing which offers a smooth, uncoated look
Coated Book-A sheet that offers vivid colors and good reproduction
Text- high-quality sheet with a lot of texture. It gives gentle colors and classy look.
Cover-Used for book covers, postcards, and business cards. It is available coated or uncoated.
You can make any of these types of paper stronger by making different shapes and use many pieces like triangles. As far as glue goes, it is made from horses. It works by putting glue on paper or something similar and then it dries and holds them together. It takes 30-60 minutes to dry depending on how much glue you use. When you're talking about glue, you are using cohesion and adhesion.Cohesion is the ability of something to stick to itself and adhesion is the ability to stick to a surface. Some questions I had about this project are:
-What are some methods engineers use to make things sturdy?
-What type of mathematics are used in this project?

I interviewed my brother, Luke Whaley, who is a student here at Bloomington High School. He has taken or is currently taking Civil Engineering, Computerized Architectural Design, and Computer Drafting as well as many Math classes including Geometry with Mrs. Powell. He stated that the best design is one that evenly distributes all the weight. He suggested to use a triangular design because it best withstands the pressure it is under. He told me that when weight is applied to a structure, it will undergo compression. He said that using extra supports and cross-supports is the best way to keep rigidity in structures that are under pressure. He added that to build a sturdy base you need it to be the heaviest part of the structure and it should be fairly wide because it needs to withstand the most weight. He also stated that the best strategy for keeping the structure together is to have all sides held firmly together with supports. He disagrees with the statement "A taller structure can hold as much weight as a shorter structure" because he said that the taller a structure is, the stronger you have to build it because when it's taller it needs more support to withstand pressures. He reinforced that even distribution throughout the base will make the strongest structure.

I wrote about my reflections of my structure project. I decided that our structure was about the perfect height and weight and had a wide enough base to hold a lot of weight. Although, it have been shorter and wider if our group wanted it to be. Some benefits of our design was that it had many inside supports including a mini triangle inside it. It also had circular supports and a big circle in the middle inside the mini triangle. It had many parts and features to it and was designed well. Some weaknesses of our design were that it didn't have enough support on the corners of the triangles. It also could have been a bit shorter and wider. If I were to do this project again, I would make a top and bottom surface and use more glue because it makes the surfaces more solid. I might have made it a different shape and made it shorter and wider and may have used different parts or strategies for the supports.

Sources-http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mglue.html
              http://www.dprint.com/paperweights.html
              http://www.piag.org/buyers/tips/Paper_grades.htm