About Building Structures for Engineering Science Fair Projects

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Engineering Science Fair Projects

Before you start designing an engineering science fair project you need to understand the concepts that you will be working with. This means that if you are interested in building a bridge you will want to start your project by learning about bridge building theories and techniques. This will provide you with the background that you need to explore a new technique or to develop a new technique for bridge building.

FEATURED ENGINEERING SCIENCE FAIR KITS

The Energy Lab allows you to experiment with energy conservation such as biomass, geothermal, hydorelectric, solar and wind.
Ages 8 and up.

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The Snap-Micro™ Controller Trainer is a way to learn about how micro-controllers are used. The easy to follow instructions guides you through the programming of basic commands by using flow charts to operate the micro-controller.
Ages 12 and up.

PURPOSE

The purpose of this experiment was to determine the effect of height to width ratio on the wind load of a building.

I became interested in this idea when I was watching a news report about a hurricane that made some taller buildings fall down while sparing many shorter buildings. People paid lots of money and did extra work to fix them.

The information gained from this experiment could help architects determine how to design buildings of a certain size so the wind has less drag on it. People could get hurt if the wind has too much drag and makes the building fall down.

HYPOTHESIS

My hypothesis was that as the height to width ratio increased, the wind load (drag) would increase.

I based my hypothesis on an article from World Book Encyclopedia that was called “Wind Surface.” It said, “That wind can blow so lightly that you can’t even feel it or it can blow so hard that it rips trees out of the ground and can crush buildings.”

EXPERIMENT DESIGN

The constants in this study were:
• The speed of the wind.
• The size of the wind tunnel.
• The time I gave the wind to blow on the structure.
• The type of material I used to make the structure (plywood).
• The surface area of the shape facing the wind.
• The shape facing the wind.
• The unit I used to measure with.
• The strength of the wind.
• The size of the wheels.
• The material the wheels are made of.
• The number of wheels on each structure.
• The size of the axels.
• The number of axels.
• The material the axels are made of.
• The size of the axel holes in the wheels.
• The place where the wind comes out of.
• The machine the wind comes out of.
• The size of holes the axels go in the structure.
• The type of glue I used to glue the structure together.
• The placing of the structure in the wind tunnel.

The manipulated variable was the height to width ratio of the structures.

The responding variable was the force of drag.

To measure the responding variable, I used a spring scale.

MATERIALS

QUANTITY	ITEM DESCRIPTION
1	Stopwatch
1	73cm by 73cm Wind Tunnel
16	Wheels
2	Leaf Blowers
16	Axel pegs
1 piece of	30cm by 121cm Plywood Board
1	Electric Wood Saw
1 Bottle	Wood Glue
1 Can	Spray Paint
1 Box	Small Nails
1	Clamp
1	Carpenters Pencil
1	Ruler
1	Hammer

Continue this abstract here... width ratio on wind load building.

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