History of Bridges
Past- Bridges were used for many things from crossing rivers to crossing canyons. Bridges have existed as early as 134 AD and there are many different types of bridges such as arch bridges and suspension bridges. Bridges are also made up of many different things. Some bridges are made up of stone, others wood, and sometimes, for a good strong bridge, steel and iron. There is many different bridges that exist from many years ago that are still standing today.
Present- Present day bridges usually much more stronger than bridges from the past. They are usually always made up of steel instead of wood that could rot or rock that could crack. One famous steel bridge that was made was the Golden Gate Bridge made in San Francisco. It is a very strong suspension bridge that is 8981 feet long that goes over the Golden Gate Strait. There are many different designs that will stand for tens of hundreds years.
Future- In the future I think bridges will be built to be more structurally stable and made up of even stronger materials than steel. Bridges are a very important part of our future. Without bridges a lot of our world would not be explored to the full extent. Also I think different styles of bridges will be created later on.
Types of Bridges
Truss- Uses the power of triangles to support the bridge. They are one of the oldest modern bridge styles and are very strong.
Arch- The bridge is in a arch shape and uses the arch shape to support the bridge by transferring the weight partially horizontally.
Suspension- Uses tall towers and suspension cables to hold up the bridge. These bridges can hold a lot of weight and are very strong.
Day 1 (3/29/17)
Today I started my working design. I plan to finish and start measuring tomorrow!
Day 2
Today I almost finished copying the bridge for my working design, but I have started measuring the bridges to see how much materials I'm using. I plan on only measuring 1/2 the drawing then I will multiply it by 4 instead of measuring the whole drawing and multiplying by 2 to save time.
Day 3
I finally finished my side view of the working design. Tomorrow I will start working on the top view of the bridge and hopefully finish it and start working on making a bridge.
Day 4
I finished the top view and me and Hudson decided to use my bridge design to make! Hopefully it will work very well.
Day 5
We have started work on making our bridge today! It is coming together very well and we are excited to test it once its all done.
Day 6
We have done more work on the one side of the bridge and it's starting to look like a real bridge. We realized that the beams in the middle should be opposite to hold the middle of the bridge better so we flipped them.
Day 7
We have started work on the other side! It is coming together really well and me and Hudson are very excited!
Day 8
We finally finished the second side! We will continue tomorrow by putting the 2 sides together with cross beams
Day 9
We finally have started working on he cross beams to connect the two sides. We are well on our way to test our bridge very soon! We are very excited
Day 10
Coach pointed out that one side was longer than the other and it was the same thing for the other side so we decided to take it apart and flip it and glue it together again. This was a pretty big set back but we will finish soon anyways. Hopefully it will work well.
Day 11
We have finally finished! We can't test it today cause the glue is still setting but we will test it tomorrow. I think it will hold atleast 10 pounds, maybe less because it is tilted a bit.
Day 12 (Testing day!)
Our bridge ended up holding 12.5 pounds! It wasn't the best but we were happy with it anyways! We think the bridge mainly broken because the 2 beams that were holding the car (weights) snapped because it was only being held there by glue. Is we put the beams on top of the bottom of the bridge side then we think it could've held more weight. Either way we were happy!
Bridge Efficiency Worksheet
To calculate our efficiency for our bridge we first have to multiply the weight that the bridge held by 454 which would be 12.5 x 454 = 5675.
Once you calculate that, you then divide the number by the weight of the bridge. So min would be 5675/355= 355. So my bridge would have an efficiency of 355.