Week 7: Information and Lab Procedure

Lab Date: May 15, 2014
Lab Occupations

• Lauren Kujawa, Researcher/Tester
• Tyler Wicker, Researcher/Tester
• Chris Gibson, Researcher/Tester
• Sal Realmuto, Researcher/Tester
• Gabe Markowitz, Researcher/ Tester

Lab Information and Procedure

• In lab the Professor provided us with more information on how to improve our final reports. Our TA stressed the importance of proper formatting and referencing.     
• In week 7 we worked to improve on the idea of using strips of paper as opposed to entire sheets. The goal was to reduce the amount of area of paper that we were using by cutting away progressively more paper after each trial. At this point in the lab the group still did not have an accurate fail weight for the wall so these trials were specifically designed to push the wall to the brink of failure.
• Trial 1

                 - 4 sheets of paper

                 - 11 strips of paper were cut from the two middle sheets

                 - eliminated 67.5 in^2 of paper from the previous trial (which contained 748 in^2 of paper)

                 - held 561.5 lbs+

                 - the bottom and top layers were kept as whole pieces of paper while the middle two were cut

• Trial 2
• an exact repeat of Trial 1 except the wall was made more carefully so human error was less of a factor

Image 1: This image displays how the two middle layers were cut before being placed into the wall. Note the strips of paper that have been taken out.

Image 2: The image above shows the wall from our first trial. Note the uneven layers due to poor construction. The sand was not evenly distributed so the walls collapsed slightly at the corners    

Image 3: This image shows the results of our second trial. Bags of gravel had to be loaded on to a member of the group in a attempt to reach a failure weight. A final weight of 561.5 lbs was added without causing the wall to fail