building construction 1 (Groupwork)-constructing arch

For this task that was given to us, we were asked to create the most strongest and stable arch. We were asked to form a group of three as there are only 6 of us in the class and I was grouped together with my classmate Amy and Royce. We had decided to use air dry clay as our material for our arch.

Firstly, we started off making cubes(shown in the image below) till it is enough. After making sure that the amount of cubes that we made were enough, we started making the key stone which is the one thing that keeps everything together into place.

After making all the cubes and the keystone, Royce started to stack them up while Amy and I started to make the support which are the ones in black, in order to make the arch stable and give the arch an ability to stand.

As you can see from the image itself, our arch is able to stand and it is very stable. However, Amy, Royce and I wanted to try making our arch look a little more decorative. So, I suggested that we can create a marble effect on our stones by not completely mixing the black and grey. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out as good as we thought it would be since the structure was already made and our clay was already beginning to dry which cause it to be difficult mixing the colours together.

As you can see, we even destroyed the structure of our arch by doing the marble effect. So, our plan was a failure. The marble effect would've look better if we started doing the effect before putting the cubes into place.

Soon after, our lecturer asked my group and the other group to try putting wallets and our phones on top of our arch to see if our structure was a success or a failure.

The other group started off by adding all of our wallets and phones on top and their structure has already collapsed.

After the other group was done testing their structure, it was our turn to take the test. We started adding our wallets and a few phones and the condition of our structure still remains. As we keep adding on, our arch began to bend down a little and it turned out to be like the image below at the end of the test which is considered a success as we still have a gap in between.