Balsa Wood Bridge With Strength To Weight Ratio
Liam, Nick, Oscar / WLPCS 5200 2nd St NW, Washington, DC 20011
Background:
As a group, we worked together to create an
accurate diagram of a physical situation through
recreating a warren truss structure, similar to real
life truss structures utilised successfully. While
researching, we noted down helpful sources of
information, such as articles on Garrett’s Bridges,
which helped us perfect our schematic design,
using scientific APA citation. Our use of APA
citation helped us work within a scientific
framework. Inspiration for our bridge structure
came from the sources we cited in APA, However,
throughout the building process we didn’t stay
completely true to our original schematic design.
While we kept the core elements of a truss
structure, we used the problem solving process by
changing some components as issues in structure
and practicality arose.
Research objective:
Build a bridge that has a strength
to weight ratio of 1 and or holds
10 pounds
Needs to be at least 10 cm tall
and 25 cm wide
Materials:
-Wood glue
-Balsa Wood
Tools:
-Exacto knives
-Rubber bands
-Ruler
-Engineering mat
-Protractors
Design process: Data:
Conclusion:
- We met our objective because our bridge
Figure 2 All of the Figure 6 The bridge when it met the requirements, held 20 pounds and
material gathered before broke from 20 pounds of
had a strength to weight ratio greater than
the building stage weight
one
- Even though our design changed
throughout the project the execution of our
design was good because our bridge held
10 pounds and had a strength to weight
ratio greater than 1 and our design had
validity because the bridge worked well.
Figure 3 FInished
- The top of the bridge was originally going
building the base of Figure 5 Our bridge before to be straight arcoss the tops of the
the bridge we poured sand in triangles but since we had diffuculty
exucuting it we decided to just cross
beams across the top. We also added a
lot of support beams in the middle to help
stablilize the bridge because the top was
glued on late and might not have been
super strong
Acknowledgements/References:
References:
1. Helping you build a model bridge when you don't know how to start.
Garrett's Bridges: Resources to Help You Build a Model Bridge. (2003).
Retrieved February 15, 2022, from https://www.garrettsbridges.com/
2. Day road bridge. (2003). Bridge Browser. Retrieved February 16, 2022,
Figure 4 Sides of the
bridge glued on. Working
from https://historicbridges.org/bridges/browser/?
Figure 1 shows the design bridgebrowser=truss/day/
we made for our bridge. on building the ceiling