Soda Wall (Testing the Strength and Force of Sand Filled Plastic Bottle-Bricks)

Every year millions of people lose homes through natural disaster or armed conflict. Safe, inexpensive homes can serve as an optimum alternative for places that are highly prone to such calamities. This project will help resolve the crisis by building houses reusing trash, namely two-liter plastic bottles filled with sand or dirt. It will also help to reduce some of the waste that is plaguing the planet by putting it to a constructive use. The variables tested during this project were the strength of the bottles as bricks using either sand or dirt as well as the durability of the wall against the force of different bullets fired from a firearm. The bullet sizes tested for this project were .40 caliber, .22 caliber and a 9 millimeter bullet. Using the amount of energy read by an infrared thermometer we determined the velocity of the bullet as it hit the wall and thus could determine the force of the projectile at the moment of impact. This enabled us to easily determine how deep the bullet penetrated the wall, without risking further damage to the wall. We tested the same bullets against both a wall with bottles filled with sand and a wall with bottles filled with dirt to similar results.