Skip Week 10 Blog Entry

The prior week, we finally tested out our final bridge. Our final bridge was a very simple, basic truss bridge that took advantage of the 7" pieces. Our concept was to build a cheap bridge instead of building an expensive bride that could hold a huge amount of weight. This was because the best bridge was defined as the bridge with the best cost/pound ratio in the course. The final cost was $211,500 and the failure load was 15.2 pounds. When you calculate the cost/pound ratio, this is equal to $13,914.47, which seems to be a pretty decent bridge. We thought that the bridge would twist and break, but this was not a problem. It was actually straight when it broke, and it broke in the middle of the bridge at two different gusset plates. We as a group agreed that it did a good job and we were happy with our results. The coming week, we will probably discuss our bridge and identify what was wrong and how we could have improved it. The major accomplishment this week was that we were able to prove that our bridge is functional and successful in the sense that it has a decent cost/pound ratio. We did not have any issues throughout the course and we functioned well as a team, each contributing to the project.

I think the most important thing I learned throughout this course is teamwork. While working in a group, we did planning, documenting, designing, computer modeling, physical modeling, and analyses as a group. We all contributed to the entire group and worked together as a whole. The skill to be able to work well with others is important for me in the future. I will definitely work with other people in the future, and this skill is very important when this happens. Without this skill, I do not think that things will go well, and everything will collapse. The least beneficial thing about this course was that it might have not been to realistic. I understand that the whole process is realistic and the steps taken are real, but it is not realistic that we are using a children's toy for this project. In the real world, we will not use toys, but professional materials and it will not be nearly as simple as this project we did. The most beneficial thing was that it was a hands-on experience. We were able to actually see how the whole process of a bridge design works, even though it was simplified. This was beneficial for me because my major is a Architectural Engineering and I hope to look for a job where I will actually do things relevant to this project. I think the whole section's operation was very good. Everything went by smoothly and the assistants were very helpful. The only thing that I would suggest is maybe making the project more realistic by using real wood and the workshop instead of just Knex pieces.