{"id":10509,"date":"2016-01-21T08:16:08","date_gmt":"2016-01-21T13:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/?p=10509"},"modified":"2016-01-21T08:16:08","modified_gmt":"2016-01-21T13:16:08","slug":"141366-holes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2016\/01\/21\/141366-holes\/","title":{"rendered":"141\/366: Holes"},"content":{"rendered":"

As mentioned last week<\/a>, SteelyKid is doing Odyssey of the Mind this year, and her team has elected to build a balsa wood structure. The goal for these is to support the maximum possible weight, and the first step of the testing is to put a “crusher board” on top. This is a couple of 18″ square sheets of plywood glued together with a hole through the middle for the safety pipe that runs up the center of the structure to keep everything aligned.<\/p>\n

Since one part of the team had a test structure ready at the end of the last meeting, I wanted to have something we could use to see if it would hold weight. So I went to Lowe’s and picked up a few 2′ squares of particle board and committed some rather trivial carpentry:<\/p>\n

\"View<\/a>
View through the hole I cut through some pieces of particle board to use testing SteelyKid’s balsa-wood structure for OM.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

(I also took a randomly artsy picture of my work, because that’s what I do…)<\/p>\n

The final structure is limited to 15 grams of balsa wood and glue; SteelyKid’s test structure weighed in at 6g. It held two sheets of particle board with a weight of a bit more than 9lbs each (so a total mass of about 8.2kg). The problem calls for taking weight off the structure, then putting it back again, so we tried that; the second time we put the boards on, one of the cross beaks cracked a little, and the third time one of the cross braces popped off.<\/p>\n

Still, that’s a pretty impressive ratio, and it was a first attempt. They can more than double the mass of balsa wood they use for future structures, too, so there’s a decent chance they’ll be able to make something that can hold a member of the team…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As mentioned last week, SteelyKid is doing Odyssey of the Mind this year, and her team has elected to build a balsa wood structure. The goal for these is to support the maximum possible weight, and the first step of the testing is to put a “crusher board” on top. This is a couple of… Continue reading 141\/366: Holes<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10510,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[684,2,50,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-684","category-personal","category-pictures","category-steelykid","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}