Nicholas Portugal January 6th, 2012 Intro Engineering Step 8 Engineering Process

To start, my first bridge-building experience was very interesting. I learned a lot from the processes of engineering, from researching my design to physically constructing my bridge. My finished product was a bit unsuccessful in my view for two reasons. Firstly, my bridge didnt exactly come out to the way I had expected it to go, but I understand that next time when I make my second bridge, I can refer to the first one for certain measurement purposes and as a model to construct something better off of. My current bridge measurements measure out like this: The length of my bridge was 14 inches with a remainder of 12 millimeters. In millimeters, the length would equal out to be 358.64800 mm. My bridges width was 2 inches long, which in mm. is 50.8 mm. The height of my bridge measures out to be 4 inches tall, or 114.3 mm. The portion underneath the bridge, the substructure had a height of 2 inches or 50.8 mm. The bridge itself above the substructure, where the roadbed lies, has a height of 2 inches or 63.5 millimeters. These dimensions worked out during the building process, because it was capable of standing up correctly and functioning. I even rolled a Ping-Pong ball as shown in the requirements for the 2012 International Bridge Contest, and the ball rolled freely along the roadbed from start to finish without bumping the walls and falling off the edge since the roadbed was laid out like railroad tracks. Furthermore, regarding my bridge results, my bridge held a mass of 23.3 and in kilograms 8.181818. Its efficiency came out to be 351.151, the grade or quality came out to be 70.2302, and my total score was 34.046 out of 35 points. Moreover, although my bridge did not go the way as planned, I would like to list out my flaws in the design. The first components I noticed in my bridge that were not supportive to the testing of the bridge were the substructure and upper design parts. The substructures, all four of them werent braced together with cross members, or the top parts of my bridge. The top parts were not braced together either, so it had no part to play in the bridges testing. Plus, the roadbed joints were glued under the roadbed members, so their placement had no effect on the bridge testing. When I construct my second bridge, I hope to place cross members everywhere necessary, as well as use only one type of glue to connect everything together. For my first bridge, I used two types of glue; hot green glue and yellow-cream colored wood glue. I noticed that the yellow wood glue didnt hold as well as the green hot glue did, so for my next bridge, if green glue is available, I hope to use this type of glue overall around the bridge so everything stays compact. The moment the bridge tested, the side of my bridge glued together with yellow wood glue snapped off first, and then the roadbed collapsed. As a result, these are some improvements I hope to include in the process of my second bridges construction.