Bridge!

[Cody]

Just for the sake of making a new post.

I am currently working on making a bridge hopefully capable of supporting a substantial amount of weight. It is going to be made completely out of those craft 'popsicle' sticks and gorilla wood glue. I haven't exactly decided how long it will be...I suppose that depends on how much I have to spend on the craft sticks. Two or three feet is what I was thinking. We will see how it turns out.

Triangles! That is all I have to say.

[Nick]

Cool! Brad and I both did that kind of project back when we were in Mr.Andersons electronics and engineering class. It was fun! Some of the bridges were strong enough to hang off of.


It is also fun to make pneumatic / hydraulic arms with corrugated plastic, syringes and tubing.

[Brad]

That is a classic project. I still have the scar from where Eric Bowman burned me with hot glue on accident while making a balsa wood bridge in middle school.

Got any specific plans or engineering in mind for this bridge construction?

[Cody]

Good plans? No. Basic plans based on the little I know about engineering, yes. I know wood is stronger when stood on it's edge vs flat. And I did a test that showed me that a when a popsicle stick is in that position it is capable of holding an astronomically large amount of weight for its size. That, and theoretically laminated sticks should be as strong or stronger than a solid piece of wood the same dimensions.

And triangles of course. I will put up some pictures if I can remember how.

[Cody]

I will post again since I just took a picture. This is actually very interesting and a sort of perspective trick I guess. It would appear that the last triangle on the right is a right triangle. It's not. Not even close...in fact it is exactly the same as all the other ones.

http://i1253.photobucket.com/albums/hh581/Jacsveus01/PB190340.jpg

Oddly enough, even putting it in the same position and looking at it with my eyes from the same location does not yield this result...or to a far far less degree. I find that rather odd.

Now you can tear apart my design haha!

[Nick]

Pssst.... photobucket sucks. Imgur is better. Also, you can attach images to posts and upload them directly.

Just so you know.
Use the image button (The TINY pic of Monalisa next to the SP (Spoiler) button when making posts.

[zourtney]

There are so many dumber and less motivated people that are steadily employed...you should put these skills to some use!

And with that out of the way: cool. I like engineering projects The best part is that they scale so well! Next you should build one over the pond.

...Or build Suriboka 2.0!! Which I think should be named "Empty Vengence" or perhaps "Rolling Blunder". But that's for another time and another thread.

[Cody]

Small update. I have to start over. Well, I don't have to but I am going to. The design seems good so far, but my building skills were slightly less than desirable. I think I have found a way to build it slightly more square and whatnot.

On another interesting note, the tensile strength of that truss thing is well beyond what I can pull with my hands. It doesn't even make unhappy noises when I yank on it.

[Nick]

Triangles rock!

After the wood one, you should see how metal compares. Get some skinny 2mm rods or something and tack them all together.

[Cody]

That would be interesting. Unfortunately I was not paying attention and snapped the truss thingy I was working on. I did glue it back together but I don't know how much I trust it. Don't know whether I should start over or just leave it be.

[zourtney]

You know what they say...only love can heal broken truss.

Oh wait, I think I got that wrong. Meh, start over! And post more pictures maybe even a Randomland-proper writeup?

[Cody]

Truss me, you got it wrong...

And perhaps! Pictures are easy but it would take a while to write a page. I did learn that the truss I made was capable of completely supporting Kyle's monstrous 180 pounds. Okay that isn't monstrous, but it sounded good.