Bonus Challenge: The Puzzle of Structural Stability

Because I had a little time on my hands after completing the Lego car, I decided to try one of the bonus challenges: namely, the indestructible box. In this challenge, I had to construct a box that contained two weighted Lego bricks and could be dropped from a height of two meters twice without breaking (and without any touch ups in between the drops).

It was harder than it sounded.

My first iteration was a catastrophe. I built a huge block of solid Legos between two green Lego bases. It did not even survive a two foot drop. There were Lego bits everywhere. The design, I realized, was fundamentally flawed. There was not enough cushioning to allow the box to 'give' when it hit the floor. Because the center was made of weighted bricks instead of regular ones, the entire structure hit the floor with more force than I expected. All the force of the contact was directly felt by the Lego pieces. My second iteration tried to combat this problem.

Iteration two used axles and joining pieces to construct a cage around  the Lego bricks. Every axle was connected together in semi-solid hexagon. The axles would bend slightly when they hit the floor, and this combined with the extra bracing around each axle might help absorb the impact and keep the structure together.

The first drop was a success.

The second one...

What Remains of Iteration Two

Not so much.

The problem was, after the first drop, several pieces came loose, and although it was not enough to break the structure, it was enough to jeopardize its stability. Thus, it was not sound enough to manage a second drop without some tweaks.

If I had more time, I would have braced the axles even more than I originally did. The axles worked to cushion the impact much more than plain Lego bricks ever could. I also might try using longer axles, which would bend more with the impact.