Last week the engineering librarian Jay Bhatt came in to
talk to us. The previous week we had
submitted questions and he briefly touched base on some of them. He explained how to use the library and other
tools we might need in order to research bridges. He also said to contact him if we had any
questions. Before he came in and talked
we discussed issues concerning the Knex bridges. We went over how much each piece would cost
and the constraints of the bridge. The
bridge had to be at least two feet long and have a flat surface for a block to
placed. After we broke up into smaller
groups we got to play around and get the feel for the Knex.
Knex and
Westpoint bridge design are similar in that you get a feel for creating a
bridge and you can play with different designs.
What Westpoint bridge design lacks in is that it is unrealistic but the
Knex make up for this. In Westpoint
bridge design the bridge would bend unrealistically. The Knex will not bend like this and will
break before they even get to that point.
In Westpoint bridge design you could play around with different types of
materials and beams, but when using Knex we are limited to the same type of
plastic and beam, they only differ in size.
One other thing that I noticed is that the Knex bridges are much more
time consuming to make. It is also hard
to tell where the breaking points are on the Knex bridges. Since this part of the project is more hands
on I feel like we will learn a lot more.
I can’t wait to start building!
-John Watson
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