Creative Construction Challenge

This open-ended exercise if for new Civil Engineers. The point is to get them thinking about how structures work, and how they collapse!

Each team gets a different shaped build-board where they must create a structure that holds a load hanger (once the false floor is removed)

To accomplish this, all they get is a few pieces of cardboard (of various types), some stickers and a couple of split pins.

They then have 40 minutes to make their structure before testing time! A load is applied from underneath, hooking onto the inverted load hanger.

Each structure is tested to destruction, but only after the group discusses what they think the failure modes will be of their structure.

Following the test (and structural collapse) the class discussed what happened in engineering terms, before the next groups turn to test their structure.