Week 6 Post

Last week we continued to build a bridge out of knex.  We chose a design that we liked and we built upon it.  We named our bridge the Love Train, although it looks like it has a lot of snowflakes on it.  We tested it out last week and we were surprised with the amount of weight the bridge could hold.  The results were very good.  In the upcoming week we plan on making the bridge cheaper without losing efficiency.  The bridge had some extra pieces on it in the middle last week that were not doing anything, so we plan on taking them off, along with adding other improvements to the bridge.  Our major accomplishment last week was designing a bridge that worked and was able to hold a decent amount of weight.  We do face the problem of money though.  Our bridge wasn't the cheapest because we chose to use a lot of smaller pieces to make the bridge more compact.  We face the challenge of making our bridge cheaper while making sure that the bridge still can hold a lot of weight.

The similarities and differences between knex and WPBD from last week that I posted have not really changed.  The only knowledge I have gained since is that making the bridge out of knex more compact has allowed our bridge to hold up more weight.  There would be some differences between using the knex and the steel bridge.  Conceptually, they should be built the same way, but due to the difference in materials, the two different bridges will need more support at different parts of the bridge.