During our engineering lab last week, librarian Jay Bhatt came in to talk to us. Some people had submitted questions to him about anything regarding this class which unfortunately he did not have a sufficient amount of time to cover many of the questions. What he was able to tell us was how to go about using the library resources to guide us on making our bridges. He also gave us his contact information so that if we needed to we could ask him any questions. Also in lab we discussed how we may not be able to make the designs we did in WPBD due to the constraints of the KNex pieces. We were also given the following parameters; the bridge had to be at least two feet long and have a flat surface for a block to place on top of the bridge. After listening to everything that had to be said beforehand, each group went back to their tables and began to get a feel for the KNex and how they can be used.
When messing around with possible structures there were some visible differences. WPBD is able to show the stresses put on each point of the bridge but the Knex has to forces in 3 dimensions instead of 2. Because we can’t measure the stresses using the KNex it would be impossible to find out what would need to be changed unless we test it. In WPBD you could use different types of materials and beams, but with KNex there are only different sizes of the chords that we can use. I personally enjoy working with KNex so I have the mindset that this part of the lab will be pretty exciting.
-Robert LaChance
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