Building a toothpick structure

[GoldenBear]

For Physics we're going to have the next few weeks to design a toothpick structure, and for an A it has to hold 100 lb. Basically we can't use super glue, regular sized toothpicks, and we have to use about 750 toothpicks.

Anyone have any tips and stuff?

 

[AlphaIVT]

lay them all on their sides, it can hold ANYTHING (exaggerated ). I had something like this for industrial tech (lame class, but didn't know it was lame ). We had 3 ice cream sticks and a bottle of glue and a piece of paper. We had to make something to hold as much as possible. Turns out the teacher just laid them all flat ont ehir sides and putted the object on top.

your project has any restrictions or requiremnts?

 

[Angrymarshmello]

I did something like this in high school for a technology class. We basically had to built a 12-15 inch bridge using toothpicks and regular elmers glue - I think it ended up holding around 60 some-odd pounds. (Best in class) How big (say the base of it) does yours have to be? Ad are you putting weight directly on top of it or what?) If you're going to have to put 100 lbs on top of it, make the top and bottom of equal size and as large as possible. Remember the lying on a bed of nails/eggs theory - they nails dont pierce the skin/eggs dont break because theres less weight being distributed on each nail-skin/egg. Try to support each "column" with cross members (? might not be correct term, but basically if you have a column, you'll want beams or something to support it from at least 4 sides ?)

 

[GoldenBear]

Yeah, 35cm high, and an open space of at least 100 cm squared at the base.

 

[loogie]

No matter how fun it seems, don't stab a toothpick in your eye.

 

[Capn]

triangles are your friend, go with a grid type structure of isosceles triangles. (three toothpicks to a side) Not sure on the exact geometry but if you screw around with it you can probably figure something out.

 

[perry]

I did something like that in high school. Coulda done it by myself and gotten an A, but I decided to work with a cute girl instead (she understood as much physics as a sack of bricks does). I let her think of what the structure should look like and then helped build it. Basically, we built a log cabin. It didn't meet the criteria set here, but it held the most weight for our class. People tried all sorts of weird designs, none worked as well as out ugly thing. To hide the fact that we used a bottle of wood glue on the thing, we painted it maroon and gold - our school colors.

 

[Fandu]

We had that exact same problem a few years back. You build a 1/16" thick base by laying the toothpicks on their side. Then you build a tower which is the required height. The weight sits on the indestructable base of horizontal toothpicks, and then the tower meets your height requirement. This sounds like it would work for you since the weight does not have to be 35cm off the ground, just the structure has to be that high.

We were the only group which thought of it. It met all of our requirements, which were:

Must have a base of Xcm^2
Must be at least 30cm high
Whoever holds the most weight wins.

 

[GoldenBear]

Any more suggestions? They've been pretty good so far..

The rules also state no laminating, which means no two toothpicks stacked on each other like ||, and no internal cross bracing.

So which design would hold the most?

One like..

|/\|/\|/\|
|/\|/\|/\|
|/\|/\|/\|

or..

|X|X|X|X|X|
|X|X|X|X|X|

Or otherwise?