Family Fun Day at the RI

We had a fabulous time on Saturday at the Royal Institution's Family Fun day. BIG thanks to Karen and our lovely RI volunteers: Rachel, Anna, Angelo who you can see here.

And here we can see some folk beavering away at their infill panel. Thanks to everyone who came along and made a few loops we finished three whole panels!

















The quiet after the storm... Once everyone had gone home we could admire the collective handiwork of a couple of hundred budding structural engineers.

Oh, and did we mention that we got to present a talk in the RI lecture theatre - with demonstrations and volunteers and science and engineering and everything? Swoon!

Did you know that the woolly French knitting that we've used for our cables here doubled in length when stretched to breaking point and it broke when loaded with 12kilos? Compare that to 1m steel cable of the same diameter which would only stretch 1mm.

Looking forward to being at the Royal Institution

We're really chuffed to be part of the Royal Institution's Family Fun Day on 9 June. If you like fabric, engineering and fun science stuff then come along. We'll have the tent on the go and will also be talking about fabric, materials and buildings in the theatre.


If you're an engineer in London and want to help out on the stall just get in touch and let us know. We're keen to hear from any engineers with an interest in structures, tensile structures and material use in buildings. No knitting experience required - it's easy to learn and there will be crafters on hand to sort things out when visitors get a bit carried away and lose track of where they are. We can pay your travel expenses and we'll also treat you to cups of tea and a slice of cake too. Actually - we can run to lunch too if that helps!

Big thanks to the M Shed in Bristol for hosting the canopy over the last week. If you got to see it we hope you liked it.

The tensile structure takes shape...

We've had a very productive couple of days at the M Shed in Bristol. Big thanks to structural engineers Rachael and Eleanor from Arup and Jenni (independent structural engineer)! We spent two days talking all things structures while making, creating and building. We talked load paths, foundations, tension, compression, properties of materials and lots, lots more. It was great to see our chum Fabrice along too helping out on a couple of the other engineering stalls.

Attaching a rather fetching green infill panel.

If you want to see and touch the canopy pop along to the M Shed where it will be displayed until Sunday 26 May. We are looking for more infill panels too. So if you fancy making a square or rectangle we'd love to see your handiwork. So far we've been using knitting looms for the panels as these create a quite open, stretchy fabric. But we're happy with hand knitted, crocheted, woven or felted squares of any colour. Pop any squares along to the M Shed or get in touch with Helen for a postal address / arrange collection.

It's all rather colourful isn't it?

One visitor suggested it would make a great tent for Snowflake (a much-loved toy dog). Who else might like to live or shelter in a colourful, woolly canopy structure?

Next stop: the Royal Institution's next Family Fun Day 9 June.

Join us at the M Shed!

We're very much looking forward to being at the M Shed on 18 and 19 May. We're teaming up with myfuturemychoice for their Immersive Week. There should be lots of fun engineering things going on with activities led by pupils or engineers as well as displays, lectures and workshops. Come along to see how the canopy is developing, craft a loop or two and find out how fabrics, making and materials play their parts in structural engineering.

Don't forget, if you want to help with the stall - get in touch with Helen helen2(dot)featherstone(at)uwe(dot)ac(dot)uk or call on 0117 3283919.

Bath Taps - Day 2

Another great day in Bath. This time we were in Green Park station next to the Farmers' Market. Here's our structure of tension cables - before the infill panels are added.







Many hands make a tented, membrane structure!















Here's Fabrice and Helen discussing which panels, what direction and how best to attach.
















Classic Bath Taps: Dino Dig sand, cornflour slime and Continuous Loop yarn.
Perfect combination!






Many thanks to Gareth, Hamish, Tom, Alex, Ellie, and Fabrice for all their enthusiasm and abilities in talking yarn/knitting/building.

Bath Taps - Day 1

We've had a really great couple of days as part of Bath Taps into
Science. This first picture shows us getting ready for the test session. In the second picture you can see some enthusiastic craft / engineers.

We've talked membrane structures, materials, fabric, tension cables, compression struts, anchor points and much, much more.

The third picture shows our set up in Founder's Hall with the beginnings of our infill panels just waiting for enthusiastic folk to come along and finish them off. We've got a colourful stack of panels now and are looking forward to seeing the canopy really take shape tomorrow as we set up in Green Park station.

More pictures to come...

Bath Taps into Science

We're excited to announce that we'll be joining in the fun at Bath Taps into Science this year. You can find us at these times here:

• Wednesday 7th March 2012 Lecture University Hall
  


• Friday 9th March 2012 Science Fair Founders Hall
  


• Saturday 10th March 2012 Science Fair Green Park Station Bath

If you're an engineer, at any stage in your career, we'd love to hear from you. If you'd like to spend a few hours talking with enthusiastic youngsters while creating a collaborative canopy from yarn do get in touch!

New Year - new start

Well, it's been while since we last posted anything here so it's time to have a quick update. We're kicking off the project again but with a slight change of plan. Rather than going to steam fairs, we're going to tap into smaller events and activities. First off - National Science and Engineering Week.

If you're interested in helping out at a stall at a Bristol or Bath festival for NSEW do get in touch. We're looking out for structural engineers and architects at any stage in their career who have a passion for communicating about their work. We'll provide all the materials and guidance on the activities - we just need people who can talk about structures with enthusiasm!

Change of Plan

Due to unforeseen circumstances we're having a change of plan. We will not be going to Steam and Vintage fairs this Summer. If you've registered for an event, you should have heard from us already, but if not do get in touch.

We are hoping to take our activities out to fairs, festivals and events over Autumn and into Spring 2012. We'll update this blog as soon as we know where and when!

First structure constructed

We've tested the lucet cord and have started creating a structure from it. Here is the cord being tested to the limit. You may want to know that it behaved in the exact opposite way to steel.

You can also see Fiona creating the beginnings of our canopy structure. Plenty of scope there for crafters to create infil panels using whatever medium they fancy. While we were testing the activity we realised that a table would be a useful addition for anchoring the canopy to, and for crafting on.

8m of lucet cord

Here's the result of our first bit of experimentation: over 8m of lucet cord made from 65m of yarn - in one continuous loop! Fiona's taken samples to test for strength and stretch. We're looking forward to getting the results.

Activity prototyping is under way

After three creative workshops we've made a decision as to what we'll be doing with visitors at the Steam and Vintage Fairs. After much discussion and testing we've decided that encouraging visitors to take part in making a canopy will create lots of opportunities for discussion. We'll be going right back to basics by asking visitors to create cords and infill panels. These will be suspended to create a canopy which grows over the festival weekend.

There'll be lots to talk about: tension and compression, material properties, strong shapes... We'll also have some demonstrations to illustrate interesting points.

Now all we need to do is get testing different types of cord manufacturing: from a basic crochet chain to French knitting to Lucet cording. If you want to help out with testing, then do get in touch!

Registration for outreach events is now open

We are pleased to announce that registration for outreach events is now open! Click here to register. The outreach events take place at Vintage and Steam Engine fairs. We're looking forward to chatting with visitors while we build a creative, collaborative canopy. Don't forget that we'll pay expenses and taking part can contribute to your IStructE CPD.

The first creative workshop

We had a lot of fun yesterday talking structures, strength, forces, and facades. Our knitters found lots of links to their work and we now have a lot of ideas to take to the next workshop on Monday.

Creative Workshops are full

We're looking forward to our first creative workshop tomorrow at UWE. We have wool, swatches, buildings and even a bicycle wheel to get the creative juices flowing.

Unfortunately all the places have now gone for the other two sessions. However, if you want to be involved you can sign up for the training to take part in the Steam Fair events. Registration will open soon!

Linked In group goes live

Great news - we now have a Linked In group. Search for Continous Loop Project and join in!

Places left on the Creative Workshops

Places are filling up fast for the Creative Workshops - but there are still a few spaces left. Do register if you wish to come along to shape the project. More information (and registration link) here.

We're really looking forward to it - it should be stimulating, challenging and fun!

Continuous Loop Project is go!

We're delighted to announce the launch of the Continuous Loop Project. We're teaming up structural engineers and crafters to get folk talking about structural engineering. We'll be taking an intrepid team of engineers to Vintage and Steam Fairs over the summer with a drop-in craft activity. We hope to see you there!