Last week in class we started designing a bridge using Knex. One problem we were having at first was not having enough of some pieces, but we were able to fix that shortly after the problem was discovered. We solved this by working as a group instead of individually. At first, everybody was building their own bridge using the knex pieces. Then we decided to keep working on my design so we combined pieces and continued working on the bridge I started. It felt good to work as a team. In coming weeks I think we need to plan better. Had we drawn out our design first, or figured out how we could have distributed out the knex pieces between us best, we could have used our time in lab more wisely. Our biggest accomplishment here was actually transitioning from WPBD to using knex. We were able to use the concepts learned from WPBD and apply them to the knex pieces. In the future weeks we will combine our different designs and work together to build the best possible knex bridge we can.
As for the transition, I felt that there were definitely similarities and differences. The biggest similarity was keeping the same design as I drew up on WPBD. The actual shape of the bridge can be kept the same, meaning the tension and compression ratios should not change too much. However, they will change due to the biggest difference between knex and WPBD. This difference is the materials used. Knex are made out of plastic, while the materials used on WPBD are metal or some kind of tubing. This affects the compression and tension ratios, therefore affecting the design of our bridge. We will have to find a median between the two to create the best possible knex bridge we can.
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