West Point Bridge Design

An opportunity to gain some more points to keep my grade up, I saw Mr. Olsen's post about building a West Point Bridge in our program on our computers. After a few different tries of making and adjusting multiple types of bridges, I developed a pretty well supported and stable bridge.

I attempted to keep the price down as much as I could which turned out to be pretty close to $400,000.

I learned a couple of engineering principles from this as well as physics.

After testing and retesting, I realized that the tension of both the compression and tension have to be under 1. I also discovered that the best way to support a bridge is from about with small, triangular piers that alleviate the compression and tension as you go to higher piers.

3rd Annual Mousetrap Racecar Challenge!

We developed, created, tested, reiterated, and retested our small, makeshift cars in this past week.
I was in a group with my classmate, Wes, and we built a sturdy but slow car, not winning any of the speed achievements, but we did win some other significant ones.
We also maintained the criteria and constraints listed under the challenge page on Mr. Olsen's blog.

All together, Wes and I managed to claim 12 achievements.



Our Race car

 


















Achievements:
Design Stage:
1. Brainiac

10 Concepts/Ideas:
*Lightweight
*Speed with Distance
*Small Wheels
*Small Body
*Wind Resistance
*Rubber Wheels
*Straight Shooter
*Strength
*Aerodynamic
*Small use of materials

2. Visualize It


Our first Sketch




















Build Stage:

3. Build It

4. The Price of Glory

The least we could do is $17 because we used

4 wheels, 3 holds, 1 mousetrap, 1 string, 4 Bars, 2 Axles, and 2 Blocks

Test Stage:

5. The Distance Event

6. Acceleration Event

7. Competitor

8. Feedback

+: It was sturdy, and it moved

Change: Could have used less materials to create our car

?: What would be a good way to change our car to make it faster/travel farther?

!: Make a more aerodynamic car, perhaps with shorter axles

9. Rework

10. Game Changer

*I think that adding a new rule that all axles have to be used. There was a constraint that we had to use two axles, but it did not say that we had to make use of them. My new rule would be to make both of the axles on the ground, and not like an axle on the ground then one just hanging in the air.

11. Name it

*I would change the Led Foot Challenge name to "If you're not first, you're last".

12. Leave it cleaner than you found it

*Wes and I dissasembled out cars completely, even if we found some of the parts already assembled, we also kept any trash off of our desk and placed it in the trash can.

I'm Back

This is the first post on here in a while, we just got back from summer vacation about a month ago, and our engineering class has been mainly working on our simple machines packet. Although long and slightly complicated, it is pretty intensive learning. It involves our engineering and problem solving skills as well as our mathematical skills. As you will see in my next post, we have spent the past week doing a mousetrap racecar challenge. Well that pretty much sums up our first month of the school year.