Each year, my company has a gingerbread competition in December. It is my favorite time of year. I get to combine my work with my passion. Structural engineering with baking. The competition is composed of the visual presentation, an oral presentation, then a shake table test where we shake it until it falls down. I love it. This year’s gingerbread competition theme was skyscrapers, but I like to do fictional structures for fun and the only tall structure I could think of was a Paw Patrol Tower.
My 2 boys are obsessed with Paw Patrol, so what would make their Christmas even more special than seeing a Paw Patrol Tower built out of gingerbread. Now my plan did backfire a little bit since they really wanted to eat the lookout tower, but I didn’t let them because it took so long to put it together, it would not be good to eat. Also, I had to take it to work for the shake table test and to be judged.
The Lookout Build
The build took a long time and I had to use a technique I never had before. I wanted the central part of the tower to be a cylinder, but gingerbread doesn’t usually lend it self well to curves. Empty aluminum cans were the molds for the cylinder. I tested it two ways. The first, with the can standing up and the full gingerbread cylinder, but it ended up melting too early even though I chilled the dough first. The second, I was half cylinders with the cans laying down. This was more successful even though the edges were not very even and I had to trim them a bit. But I was able to make enough in a few batches to get the tower up.
This gingerbread tower was not some gingerbread kit that you can buy in the store. It was made completely from scratch. My partner drew each piece to scale in AutoCAD based on the concept sketch of the lookout tower prior and a template printed out. I started assembling after all the pieces were baked. It took a long time since I had to use a lot of royal icing to get everything to stay together and temporarily held together with rubber bands so they didn’t spread apart. The tower section and the top section had to be assembled separately, fully dried, and decorated before I put them together. I even transported them to my office in two pieces, so it could make the 1 hr drive to downtown LA without breaking. I originally thought the tower would break apart when I put the top piece on. But it managed to stay intact and not look too bad.
Video Presentation
Not only was I building, but also creating a video of the build for my presentation. I wanted to do a stop motion video of the Paw Patrol toys constructing the tower together. This was not an easy feat. Just building the tower by itself was hard. But stopping every few seconds to allow my cell phone to capture an image was a little tricky. It was a lot of hoping back and forth into the frame, but I think in the end it was all worth it.
I was able to use a pretty nifty app called Stop Motion Studio on my cell phone to capture it. I broke up the build into different videos, then delete images where I accidentally was captured. It worked really well. There is even a setting that shows you what the last image was a little transparent. This allows you to set up your cell phone in the same place as before, if you need to take a break (like I did). In the end, the presentation turned out awesome and I actually won the presentation portion of the competition.
Shake Table Test
I didn’t expect the Paw Patrol Gingerbread Tower to last very long. The base was very weak and the top was super heavy, but it did better than I thought. As a structural engineer, I could have very easily predicted that it would break at the base. Mostly because of the cantilever (and inverted pendulum) type structure. What I wasn’t ready for, was how well the broken portion stayed together. That royal frosting, once dried, is pretty strong stuff. It has saved my structures in the past, but I didn’t think it would hold this well. I was pleasantly surprised.
I did not win the shake table test, but I enjoyed watching the tower break apart. As a structural engineer, you never want a real building to do that in an earthquake. But, I have always enjoyed breaking materials since doing it in the lab back in school. Even though this took hours upon hours to create, it was still fun to watch it fall. I can’t wait until next year when I get to create some more fun gingerbread structures.