The Nature of Geometric Shapes
In constructing our road sign support, my team and I had to decide upon which kind of shapes we would use in our design to support it the best. There are many possible shapes that we could have used, but the 3 basic building shapes are squares, half circles, and triangles. The images below will show what happens to these shapes when pressure is applied to them.
Above: Squares are pretty strong, but they eventually collapse under great pressure.
Above: Half circles are not reinforced in the middle and break under pressure as a result.
Above: Triangles are very resistant to compression because their shape gives each vertex equal and opposite force when pressure is applied. Our group used a lot of triangles in our design, and as a result, the road sign support was very resistant to tension and compression.