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.