Straw+Tower+Project

Self Write Up: One very essential lesson that I learned from this experience is that of team work and cooperation. Throughout the project my group had to overcome a couple problems like how to build the tower and why to build it like that. But once we all agreed on one specific and awkward design it all worked out, in time.

Another thing I learned from this project was definately how to control my patience. Once we decided on how we were going to biuld the tower, it was just a matter of making basically the same parts over and over again. After doing nothing but making squares and triangles for hours it got a little hard to focus on the project. But in the end it was worth it.

My creativeness was also tested because at first our group didn't really have a strong base for the tower. So I spent almost an hour thinking of a design that would hold the weight of the top most part of the tower. I eventually thought of one though and the rest of the group agreed on it as well, so we used it.

If I were to do this project again, I would probably make a wider base and add more support beams thoughout the entire structure. Something I would do the same though would be to have the same style for the base. I would also use



Group Write Up: We worked well as a group and all of us thought of some good ideas. The best idea that we thought of was to form the straws into a square and then tape them into a triangle. Once the straws were into the triangles we the made our base out of six of them into a hexagon. This made a strong base which later held our needle point of the tower. The needle point of this tower was separate from the rest of the tower and was set on after the base was formed. It measure over half of the tower and helped limit the number of straws needed thus lowering the weight of the tower. Some of the obstacles that we encountered were the tape was less than spectacular and that needle point would not stand straight into the air and would always lean over and cause the tower to fall. The tape was the biggest obstacle since we needed to waste five or ten minutes to re-tape the tower every time. The other problem that we faced was the needle point. We needed to brace the needle point and once that was done it stood straight in the air and helped in the height and the structural stability of the tower.