Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Spaghetti Towers



On this spaghetti tower, we use a total of 30 spaghetti sticks and 16 marshmallows. The amount spent was $460.


Our tower came out to a height of 87 centimeters.  This past the assignment of 80 centimeters.

 
Our design is based upon rectangles with triangle cross sections. Originally, we had planned on building a triangular prism. However, the model did not support itself and kept on falling over and breaking. We switched to the square base and this was able to support the rest of the structure much better. There wasn't anything that I didn't like about our tower. Our biggest challenge was probably when the tower kept on falling and wouldn't hold itself. We overcame this by redesigning the tower and adding more triangles to keep it sturdy. If we had the opportunity to redesign the tower, I wouldn't change anything. This is because our tower was able to stand and pass the minimum height requirement.






I personally liked this project because I like physics. I didn't really want to give up because I like building stuff. It fascinates me how a thin spaghetti noodle and marshmallows can become such a tower like this. As I looked around the room, there were many towers that was similar to ours. We all had the same basic idea. If we could add another material to the mix, it would be duct tape. Why wouldn't I want to add duct tape. Duct tape would help it stand so much easier. Also, you could wrap the spaghetti in duct tape so it will have more strength. My contribution to the group was designing and building the tower.

No comments:

Post a Comment