Week 8

The method of joints is fairly useful in figuring out what patterns might work better in building the overall bridge but for real life bridges, the method of joints will at best give you a  good estimate of what to do. It does not account for all of the forces applied to a bridge and other factors such as wear and tear. It's a good starting point for designing a bridge and understanding how bridges distribute weight. It also doesn't account for uneven weight distribution all that well so I think a tool like WPBD would be better for making all the calculations involved in a moving object applying stress on the bridge. We would also have to consider other factors such as wind and durability, as well as torsion forces that can occur when testing out a bridge.

Last week in class, we worked on creating our 36" bridge and exploring new ways of placing the k'nex pieces so that they interlock with each other better. We also worked with the method of joints to see how stress affects truss designs and our bridge to understand it a bit better. This week we plan on further working on our bridge and testing it out if we get the opportunity.