Last week in class we tried designing the cheapest possible bridge that was still stable enough for a truck to cross over safely. The approximate cost we got was not nearly low enough as the one in class was $125,000. However, it was a very good learning experience, showing me how important the material, length, and position of each beam is. In the coming weeks we are going to work better as a team to accomplish our goals quicker, and hopefully we will also acquire better results then how we did when we worked individually. The biggest accomplishment of the team last week was designing a bridge that cheap, saying that our cheapest bridge the previous week was still over $500,000. That is a major improvement right there. I think our team shares the same basic ideas of how to build the bridge. I see this as a problem because we then become less creative and have less ideas as to how to improve our bridge and make it cheaper to build at the same time.
I think WPBD is very realistic in terms of what's needed to build a real bridge. While the animations of the truck testing out the bridge are over exaggerated, the tests still show us the best possible ways to improve the bridge to be the best and cheapest to build it can possibly be. WPBD is realistic by addressing the proper materials, tension/compressions of each beam, and approximate cost that the bridge would be to build, especially since WPBD uses actual materials used to build real bridges. This will not be as effective for us though when we build using knex. However, some of the concepts will be the same and should help guide us to building the best/cheapest bridge possible.
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