Spaghetti Bridge Assignment

Who do you think creates the human-made structures in our town? Who makes sure
they are safe for us to use? 

It is civil engineers who design and create structures such as buildings, dams,
highways, skyscrapers and bridges. Engineering use the engineering design process to
design successful bridges.

Your engineering design challenge is to design a bridge that can hold the most weight
before breaking. Like engineers, you will be given constraints- in this case, you can only
use spaghetti and glue to construct your bridges in the time allotted. We can then test
them by applying weights to see when they break. Let's get started! 

Materials List
 450 grams of dry spaghetti
 glue gun
 glue sticks, 1 small package
 various weights from 5 to 50 pounds
 large tub (or newspapers to spread out), to make clean-up easier
 2 tables (placed 20 cm apart)
*You can only use the 450 grams of spaghetti and a small package of glue sticks.

Safety Issues

 Be careful not to get burned from the hot glue and hot glue guns.
 Wear safety glasses.
 Beware of falling weights.

Activity Scaling

Before building, you must choose one truss system from below to strengthen your
bridge structure. The designs are made from short straight pieces put together in
patterns that include triangles.

You must draw your design on paper using the actual size and measurements before creating your
bridge.

Draw trusses constructed of individual triangles and identify the angles and side lengths of the triangles.
See pictures below. Make sure that your bridge is long enough to span 30 cm between two tables. It
cannot be longer or shorter.
After sending your design draft to Mrs. Feniuk you can start building your bridge.

Take a picture of your finished bridge and send it to me.

When you are ready on one of our video meetings, you will apply weights starting with 5 pounds and
working up to 50 pounds, or until the bridge breaks. You will re-design and re-test.

Investigating Questions

 What happened when you added more weights? What does the bridge look like?
 Does adding more height to the bridge make it stronger?
 What are some ways to further improve your design?