Soda straw tower
		In college I took a great class where we got to build things.   I worked with a team of 3 (lazy ass) people.  The task was to build the highest tower possible out of 500 soda straws, 300 straight pins.   I designed a special connection method used to stretch the use of the pins and maximize the structural aspeces of a soda straw.   I also did all the design for the structure and the base.  Our tower reached 23 feet !  from 6 inch soada straws!
		The base was simple geometry of truss structure to communicate the weight and stress of the tower to three points of the feet.  Again, a minimum number of push pins and straws was used to construct the base.   Most of the rest of my 50 class mates couldn't build their bases correct or strong enough.   Half the other towers fell durring constrctuion.   We had 2 hours to build.   Our team pre-fabed our structure and assembled it in about 25 min.   That was such a fun class.   I was dissapointed with engineering school for not having as much hands on experiences such as this. .
			Our tower is in the back, corner.  You can see the other largely pathetic towers.   One miracoulously ugly tower reached 31 1/2 feet that day.   I still liked our tower, it was elegant and strong.  When we were tearing it up to destroy it.  Its strengh was real obvious.  It did not want to die.
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