Bridge Building Challenge PART 2

The overall goal of the past month and a half or so, was to better our original bridge design, which mine completely failed. So all of the moment calculations, truss calculations, MD solids, beam deflection, and Free body diagrams have been towards the overall goal of building a good, stable bridge.

2.1.7 Calculating trusses

We got more practice with trusses today during our block period. We used our 2J=M+R formula to determine if they were statically determinate, then solve for unknown values.

Truss Systems

A long and complicated process, truss systems are difficult to comprehend unless you know how to do it. It involves much of the information we have learned in the past, like moments, the use of free body diagrams, and trigonometry.
We had a large packet to complete, but I am only going to upload a few pieces of work:
As you can see, this work was very computational, and is very vague to anyone unfamiliar with the subject. All in all, I think this lesson will help u in our bridge building contest in the end of the lessons

Activities

Lately, mainly on block days, we get lectures about different ideas or themes used in engineering. We have gone though moments, beam deflection, free body diagrams, electrical circuits, and centroids.
I have already talked about centroids in previous posts, so this will not be addressing those.
Moments, free body diagrams, and beam deflection go together. With free body diagrams, we are able to view the forces from different components and how they act upon an object, which relates to beam deflection, which incorporates the knowledge of where the weight is placed, the height off the ground, and the dimensions of the wood. That combines with moments, because moments is really saying the moment of inertia, which includes the dimensions of wood to discover it.
The electrical circuits activity was very difficult to accomplish because it required the use of electrical equipment which could be shot, burnt out, or just not working. Our main objective was to create an electrical circuit that would turn on a light bulb. After we accomplished that, we had to measure the voltage and resistance, then moved onto more intense circuit making.

SEA PEARCH

For a while now, every Monday and Friday, we have been working collaboratively with the NJROTC students in creating the SEA PEARCH submarine. I was placed in a group with Ralph, Wes, Jesse, and myself.
Our group finished relatively early and relaxed and tested the project out. In the end, we had created games that we voted for. The two that won were the sumo wrestling and capture the flag. Our group was in charge of the sumo wrestling ring and the ruled of the game.

Leadership 101/Dot game

On block day, our class broke up into teams of about 4 or 5 people, each of us electing our own team leader. Then we had a short lecture on leadership, direction, alignment, and commitment. After that we gathered around to demonstrate those traits through a dot game. We would stand in a large triangle, with people being dots, and we had to pass a tennis ball around while being given certain restraints. For example, we had to pass it to everyone, without anyone touching it one time, or not being able to pass it to anyone adjacent to you.

Centroids!

Centroid are the centers of masses, mostly used in construction of buildings through geometric shapes. Finding the centroid allows engineers to create a safer building, and a stronger one.
We had a worksheet, 2.1.1, and in the worksheet, we were asked to compute multiple centroids of usual geometric shapes, such as rectangles, circles, and triangles.
It was all pretty simple, until there were crazy shapes introduced, like a rectangle with negative space in forms of a semicircle, and a rectangle.
After that we had to create our own centroid both in reality and a virtual one on MDSolids.
MDSolids gives you a very accurate measurements that you enter into the program, as well as the exact placement of the centroid.
Pictures will be added