Back to the drawing board it was.
Tony told us that we could continue using the materials we procured, so it was time to figure out how much of pipe we could cut. One of the seniors offering to help out kindly did some calculations with us, and the original copy of his workings can be found here: Marine Surveillance (MnT).
He also calculated the amount of weight the PVC pipe could support and plotted a graph, which, long story short — means we could use 1m long pipes to support 4kg worth of weight.
Here’s some footage of us (starring Jing Rui) attempting to understand the workings…
the next step was to cut it!
to be continued