I must say that I was pleasantly surprised that we were working upon a project that required a good deal of thought and planning within 15 mins of the very beginning of class. This project was a bit of a mental challenge in the fact that one had a limited type of materials and and a time limit upon us.
My first few approaches were one of pure structural nature. I began thinking of the construction of extremely tall radio towers, in which pyramidal supports are buttressed by the three main cylindrical towers arranged in a triangular shape. So I began by rolling the necessary materials needed for construction, but here is where my problems began.
First, the glue we were required to use is far too slow to dry in the time allotted to us, for this method to work, even with the assistance of a crude fan I made in order to expedite the process.
Second, the cylinders I made were far too weak to support the compressive force of my hands, let alone a ten pound cinderblock.
So I had to rearrange my thinking to adapt to the two main problems presented by the task at hand. I began to think more and more "outside the box" in order to solve this task. Inspiration stuck me as I decided to make a woven cradle out of folded strips of newspaper, each "strand" in the weave of paper being several sheets thick. This weave would provide a sturdy rest for the block to lay upon. Again inspiration struck as realized that assignment made no mention of not be able to use ones surroundings in order to further increase the height of the block.
This led to me eventually using the ladder to my advantage by utilizing it's height and rungs. I decided to construct a "bridge" that could go across the gap between the opposite rungs, and placing the weave in the middle of it, and on the weave, the block. I made several thick crossbeams that would support the weight of the block attached simply by the glue. I further strengthened the beams by liberally filling the interior of them with glue in order fully strengthen them, but this crude idea was to be the undoing of this construct.
I believed the glue used would set within the hour allotted for drying, yet it did not, leaving the crossbeams wet still and therefore robbing the any chance at all that it would support even a pound, let alone ten. This glue was too slow to dry to dry in this climate and time. Even the overall design was rather poor, and rather crude. If asked to do this task again, I would revert to my first idea of scaffolding, as radio towers still stand today, proving that that the design itself works, but the only difference would be in the practical application.
