Build or Bust (BLD)

Building design provides opportunities to look at vibrations, resonances in structures, and how to damp such vibrations by selective use of materials. Here the students deal specifically with making buildings more resistant to earthquake damage, and to insulate them from vibrations caused, for example, by underground railways situated beneath or nearby. Here is where the mathematics of simple harmonic motion (SHM) is used to model the behaviour of oscillators, and where students use physical models to explore the behaviour of structures.

‌There are also opportunities to study heating and cooling, and thermal properties of materials. Students use a continuous flow technique to relate heating or coolling power to specific heat capacity, temperature change and flow rate in a heating or cooling system, and they explore how phase-change materials can be used to control temperature in buildings. The picture shows a student testing a model structure on an 'earthquake' vibrating table.

The main physics content areas are:

Simple harmonic motion
Forces vibrations, resonance and damping
Waves in solids; refraction
Mechanical properties of solids
Energy and temperature change
Latent heart and phase change