March 23rd, 2010

It has been a while since I have posted a blog on this website. Alot of things have occurred since I last made a post. First off was the Citywide Science Fair competition. To sum up the event, I did not win and my division was the hardest division in the competition. Though I dont want to make excuses, I believe that I was judged unfairly as the individuals that contained the futuristic robots got all the recognition and the judges eye. Second, I applied to Isweep and I found out this past weekend that I have been qualified for Isweep and am very much looking forward to go for a second consecutive year. The problem that lays in my project is that it does not reach the level of the other projects as I have been a participant of Isweep before. I need to make my project more complex and I believe that, working with the equipment at UT, it can make it happen. If I were to use my personal materials, then I wont be able to do alot. I hope that this can happen, and make my project a top notch project.

Complete project

I wasnt able to make the school wide science fair due to fact that my dad was having surgery in Houston , but I am completely ready for city wide. I have the projected completed and all the necessary requirements for this project. Check out some of the screen shots of my power point!

12-13-09 Completed Project and Research Paper

I have finally completed the project and have finished all the slides. Below is my research paper:

Every year thousands of homes in the world are being destroyed, not due to only hurricanes and other natural disasters, but a common element, Soil. As constructers make very profound mistakes on the soil and surface they choose to build on, more and more buildings are being destroyed due to a bad foundation.

Constructorsand Construction managers have an important task of choosing the right surface to build the building on. Many times there are costly mistakes by them that cause a bad foundation. The surface type is very important when it is time to build. The most common surface types to build a building on are soil,topsoil,sand, and clay. Every type of surface type has their own maximum strength that it can hold, which is called bearing capacity. The bearing capacity is the capacity of soil to support the loads applied to the ground. Often constructers fail to undermine the amount the surface type can hold, and therefore once the building is made, usually gets destroyed within a couple of years. Using a pentrometer, constructers can accurately measure the strength of soil and how far it will penetrate within certain conditions. Constructers need to find the best surface area and the surface type with the greatest strength in any condition in order to maximize the life on the building.

The bearing capacity of the surface area is important to find as it is a crucial factor in determining the life of a building. Often times, constructers choose the wrong surface area with a small amount of strength and causes the foundation to either slide or crack, and eventually break. This can be a very dangerous problem and costly, as people may get hurt or you have to fix the house again. They must fix this problem, or every year thousands of more homes will get destroyed.

December 11, 2009

Its been a while since I have last blogged as I haven't gotten a chance. Today I have completed 2/3 of my project and I used topsoil instead of plain soil. The topsoil contained a large amount of rocks and was definitely harder than plain soil. After testing the soil in the same format as the regular soil I came to these conclusions: The topsoil soil is a great soil to have a foundation built in, when its dry. When the topsoil gets a large amount of water added to it, it quickly becomes a wetland and it strength dissapears. The first soil I used retained it strength despite adding the same amount of water to it. Tomorrow I plan to complete the last part of the experiment using sand which foundations are built on constantly. I hope to finish it tomorrow and complete my data charts and complete the project.

December 04, 2009

Today I have finally started to do my project. The last couple of days with the help of my friends, Mario and Burak, I was able to create my so called machine to start the project. Today I tested the soil aspect of it. I tested the strength of the soil with 300 ml weight, 600 ml, and 900 ml. I changed the amount of water ( half a jug in one box and full jug in another ) and tested it with 300 600 and 900 again. At first I tried for a while to analyze the data and i was confused. I am still preety confused but looking at the data, I have made a conclusion that despite the amount of water added to the soil, there is not a considerable difference on how much it penetrated in the soil. Despite even changing the amount of weight 300 600 or 900, and it still remained a constant amount of meters into the soil. Tommarow I plan on testing sand.

November 28,2009

After a long thanksgiving break, I have finally gotten time to start working on my project. Today I have researched more about the topic of how soil effects buildings and its foundations. After learning about the information, I have completed the slides from Title to materials. I hope to start working on the experiment part sometime next week. The questions that I need help on answering is whether there is more to this project that can explained. From what I learned the soil type is very important and needs to be known. But it makes this project very one dimensional. I hope to learn more about this soon.

thanks

November 24,2009- Day 1

Today was the first day of the start of a new year of science fair. A group of students, including me, and Mr.Rasul visited Dr.Yildirim of the UT Civil Engineering Department and I was given the project of finding the capacity a soil can hold. I just bought the necessary materials in order to conduct the project. I am looking forward to conducting and finishing this project, as my ultimate goal is to reach state and go to Isweep. I would like to thank Dr.Yildirim and Mr.Rasul for helping us start these projects.

Thanks.