Berk E.

Identify the Need

Our task is to build a tower from popsicle sticks that could carry the weight amount of about 6 textbooks.

Research

I have researched and found out that stable and strong structures are made  considering these major factors:

-Wide base
-use of triangles
-heavy base
-more support points

 

Here are the basic steps to making a popsicle stick tower that will be capable of carrying much weight. My popsicle tower wont be as tall as the tower made here since we are only provided with 60 popsicle sticks for our tower. These steps were found online on wikihow.com. 

 

1. Make squares.

 

 2. Lay out four popsicle sticks in a square. The vertical ones will be laying on top of, or over, the horizontal ones.

• Each glued stick is one "popsicle stick width" in from the tip of the stick it is glued to. A glued joint is one stick width down from the top tip, and one stick width to the right of the left tip. Add another dab of glue in the three other places where the crossing or horizontal sticks touch the vertical sticks.

• To align the sticks and ensure "squareness" several rocks slabs were used as a straight-edge. They were also used as weights to lay on top of squares to "clamp" them in place until the glue dried. Bricks or other flat massive items may be more commonly found, and may be used. You may use a builder's square or other straight edges for alignment.

• Lay sticks out two-by-two (two sticks side by side) on the left, and two sticks side by side on the right. Place a crossing stick and add a dab of glue only to the inner stick. Remove the outer-most stick before the glue sets. The remaining (glued) stick is one popsicle stick width in from the tip of the crossing stick.

• Put a weight on the square, and allow the glue to set.

• Once the glue dries on this basic square, fit a cross brace diagonally across the square. Make sure this brace is either inside or outside depending on the module you are constructing. You will repeat this "make a square" process many times, but it may help to avoid errors (wasting popsicle sticks) if you build one full cube first

 

3. Join two squares with opposing cross braces to form a cube. More sticks are used to "tie" the squares together into a cube. First the two bottom sticks were glued, weighted, and allowed to dry, then the structure was turned over and two sticks were added to tie together the opposite side of the cube. Opposing cross braces means a Z braced square is joined to an S braced square.

 

4. Once two cubes have been created, they may be stacked and joined togetherby adding glue where the sticks touch. Clamp the leg joints with clothes pins and allow time to dry.

• There are two interlocking types; an "inside stick cube" and an "outside stick cube". These alternate in the tower structure. The load bearing (vertical) sticks rest directly on horizontal sticks.

• The cross-braces on the second module were designed to be counter (opposite) to those on the first module. If the first module can be thought of as having Z braces, the second module can be thought of as having S braces.

 

5. To restate: make square frames, join the squares into cubes, then join the cubes into a tower.

 

6. Finished.

Develop Solutions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Choose Solution

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Redisgn

I could redisgn my popsicle tower by adding some triangles on the faces of my popsicle stick tower. That was one criteria that i missed when building my popsicle stick tower. All the other criterias were filled, heavy base couldn't be much accompolished because we are restricted to only use one building material which is the popsicle stick. Also I should have made my design at least one stroy lower since it is likely to be out of balance when it is too high above ground.  Our group had chosen my design to build but made a few modifications and not much has been changed from my design. Considering that and knowing that our tower has passed the challenge of carrying 6 and more textbooks makes my tower fairly well designed since it would most likely be capable of passing the test without any modifications made to it. My tower design was well done and had filled almost all the criteria that a stable structure would have when building it, which states that my tower was well designed and planned. The image below is the tower that me and my groupmates have build.