Engineering Journal

Day 1: We made the sheet with our ideas, and made sketches of our three possible bridges. We
got our supplies and got cardboard for our jig.

Day 2: We picked the design we wanted and started building our jig. We then began assembling
one side of our bridge using the jig, and we finished the first side by the end of class.

Day 3: We began building our other side of the bridge. We used the jig and built the other side
completely reversed and mirrored, so the bridge would be symmetrical.

Day 4: We connected the two sides of the bridge, and began to test it. Our first test went well,
and we found out what to improve on the bridge.

Day 5: We gathered our supplies for our final bridge, and we brainstormed how to improve our
bridge while saving sticks. We began our jig and worked on our final sketch.

Day 6: (both gone)

Day 7: We finished our new jig, and prepared for the final bridge. We were finished with one
side of the final bridge.

Day 8: We continued the final bridge using the new jig. While one partner worked on the last
side of the bridge, the other simultaneously worked on the final sketch. By the end of class, we
were done with the final sketch and both sides.

Day 9: We finished connecting both sides, and we tested the bridge. We also turned in our
drawings.

Analysis:

Our bridge failed because of some glue joints were not very strong, and especially after

our first bridge, we didn’t focus on that. What also went wrong, is that the bridge seemed to

collapse in all the places where the two sides weren’t connected. For example, the first bridge

collapsed in one spot, so we removed sticks from one area and connected them in that area for

our final bridge. On top of that, the bridge then collapsed in the spot where we originally

removed the stick, which resulted in a lesser amount of weight held.

 Some improvements we can make, are to be more efficient while glueing, in the sense

that we should hold the glue joint together, faster, so it is more effective. Although we removed

sticks from one area, and moved them to another, which is an economical idea, the mistake we

made was that we took the sticks out form an important area. These improvements would prove

to be effective, because then the weight would be distributed evenly, and the bridge would be

connected everywhere, maintaining equilibrium.