Impassable Bridge
When it comes to surviving the zombie apocalypse security is a major concern, as is the ability to go out and seek out resouces such as food in order to survive. Therefore developing a home base that allows humans to enter and exit easily, but stops the progress of zombies, is important in your long term survival.
Zombies are persistent in seeking out humans, but are often clumsy and move without thinking. Therefore they are susceptible to obstacles that are put in their way. This provides an advantage to humans which are capable of more complex thought and more nimble movement. |
Walls and gates can be effective in keeping zombies out, but are often very reliant on finding available resources, and the gates provide a weak point in the structure of the wall that can be exploited by a zombie horde.
Pits or trenches that encircle a base provide a viable alternative to walls as they only need to be dug and are therefore not reliant on a lot of resources. However since people need to be able to leave, including in vehicles, to be able to go out searching, bridges are required to cross these pits. These bridges provide a weak point to the security of the base.
In this task you are going to design an innovative bridge design, one that allows humans and vehicles to cross the bridge, but does not allow zombies to cross. You want to be able to make the bridge safe to cross, then on the other side make it unsafe to cross again. You will be provided with a mock up of the gap you will need to span, your bridge will need to fit this.
You will design and build this bridge according to the engineering design process, a summary of which can be found here. The process has 4 main stages.
Pits or trenches that encircle a base provide a viable alternative to walls as they only need to be dug and are therefore not reliant on a lot of resources. However since people need to be able to leave, including in vehicles, to be able to go out searching, bridges are required to cross these pits. These bridges provide a weak point to the security of the base.
In this task you are going to design an innovative bridge design, one that allows humans and vehicles to cross the bridge, but does not allow zombies to cross. You want to be able to make the bridge safe to cross, then on the other side make it unsafe to cross again. You will be provided with a mock up of the gap you will need to span, your bridge will need to fit this.
You will design and build this bridge according to the engineering design process, a summary of which can be found here. The process has 4 main stages.
Define
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Deconstruct the problem to specify the requirements of the task. Some of the questions that may help you with this are as follows
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Ideate
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In this stage you will come up with at least three different ideas for the design of your bridge. Each of these designs must include the following
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Prototype
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In this section you will need to turn your idea into a reality by using he tools and materials in the STEM Centre to build your design. It should be built to it the model trench that is being used for this task. You will need to document your build process as part of this task. This involves making notes about what you did, successes, challenges etc as well as annotated photos.
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Test and Evaluate
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When the prototype is created you will test the design to determine how effectively it works. If there is time you can go back and make changes to your design. Your final design should be a combination of laser cut and/or 3D printed parts.
You will then undergo a process of self and peer evaluation in which you will look critically at your design to look at the postives of the design as well as factors that could have been improved with more time |