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.

Design Thinking

After some excellent presentations from my fellow students, I decided to transfer some of the note I jotted down.
Empathize:

• Empathy is used to get to know the customer and what he/she wants

Define:

• As everyone knows, it is finding out and stating the problem that needs to be solved.

Ideate:

• Ideate is summed up by the creation and brainstorming of ideas.

Prototype:

• The actual physical representation of your idea, including the constraints.

Test:

• Fail early, fail often! Putting the prototype into action and refining it to solve the defined problem.

Architecture Project

We are working on an architecture project. I am partners with Sean Lee and our client is Mr. Lemei. He asked us to create a storage room for his physics equipment. I have made qa sketch in CAD, it is not very good but it is just the beggining layout.

I made the model in Minecraft. 1 foot is equal to 1 block, except vertically, which i changed to 3 feet per block

Influential Architects

We watched 10 short videos about influential architects and were asked to record what stood out to us from each architect.

1. Miles van der Rohe: He is one of the fathers of modern architecture because of his extensive use of steel, glass, and lightweight structures. He coined the phrase "Less is more".
2. Shin Takamatsu: His buildings are original, ascetic, and inventions. His buildings all have a weird look to them, like a machine. He was an innovative genius who had a different view of structures.
3. Andrea Palladia: He is famous for the use of proportions in his works.
4. Etienne Louis Boulle: Based off of the Greeks and Romans, he expanded their buildings with symmetry and expanding the sizes.
5. Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris (Le Corbusier): Considered one of the first modern architects, he was very interested in designing a new way of urban living. Developed and used a unique system of proportions.
6. Frank Furness: Taking the Victorian style, Furness uses a common architectural language to oversize, squeeze, stretch, or over accentuate buildings.
7. Frank Lloid Wright: Known as one of the greatest American architects of all time, Wright used and is known for his extensive use of free flowing forms.
8. Antoni Gaudi: Breaking from traditional lines and forms, his buildings prove that buildings do not have to be normal or by certain guildlines.
9. Tadao Ando: Using deliberate, bold, and serious forms, and the use of concrete, his building are sublime and beautiful, using water and light in his elements.
10. Coop Himmelblau: Using deconstructionism, Coop Himmelblau changed the way we look at buildings, with the unique, shuffled and misplaced styles of buildings.

Marshmallow Challenge

Sean Lee, Israel, Chase, and I competed against the class in a marshmallow challenge in which we had to create the highest free standing structure with the marshmallow on top. We had twenty pieces of raw pasta, a foot of tape, a marshmallow, and a piece of string. In the beginning, we made a long and drawn out structure that would have worked if we had more time and more supplies, would have worked, but in the end, we made two triangular bases taped together with pasta bundled at the top. We did not use the string at all, but we used all of the pasta and tape, but we didn't even use the tape. In the very end, our structure stood at about 25-26 centimeters tall, winning the challenge as the Rise Against Plastic team.