Building bridges to support weight
Engineers face many challenges and use math and science as tools to solve complex problems. People live in many diverse places around the world - but one difficulty is to be able to reach areas that may be cut off from such topographic phenomenon such as canyons or rivers.
Today's challenge is to engineer a bridge that will support the most weight. Since weight is the attractive force of an object with mass and it's gravitational attraction to the earth, you must design and build a bridge that will not only span a bucket, but support the largest amount of weight using only Popsicle sticks, hot glue and up to 1 meter of string.
Today's challenge is to engineer a bridge that will support the most weight. Since weight is the attractive force of an object with mass and it's gravitational attraction to the earth, you must design and build a bridge that will not only span a bucket, but support the largest amount of weight using only Popsicle sticks, hot glue and up to 1 meter of string.
Rules:
- You will create a design on paper (have all of your names on the paper).
- You can only use the Popsicle sticks, Hot Glue and up to 1 meter of string.
- Score is based on the following formula: (Mass of the Weights / Mass of the Bridge).
- Any score that exceeds 300 will get 50 points of extra credit.
Top 3 will earn the following extra credit scores:
- 1st Place: 30
- 2nd Place: 20
- 3rd Place: 10
Current Bridge Designs
In this activity - students study how weight affects structures like bridges, and study how to make bridges even stronger.
Some things to consider:
Some things to consider:
- Joists are stronger when they are vertical and not horizontal
- Joints are weak spots
- Triangles built in the structure help to maintain strength and stability
- Arches are fantastic at spreading the weight.
Bridge Movie
On this video - take notes on the following key points:
- What are the problems that these engineers faced and had to solve?
- What are the solutions that they came up with?
- What are the key components that make the bridges work?