ElliottsBridge

Reflection: This bridge project turned out to be a little harder than expected. The first major dilemma I ran into was trying to figure out how to calculate how long the top curved portion of my bridge should be. It turned out it was easiest to guess and check, because the graph paper really had no more efficient way of doing so. My second problem came again with the arches. Gluing them down became increasingly difficult, and I had to use pins to keep them down while the glue dried. This caused the ends to split and, to my belief, make the ends of my bridge weaker; however, that is not where it ended up breaking at anyways. I chose the above-arch design for its strength in simplicity. The arch, along with supporting rods that were connected from the base of the bridge to the arch, allows the bridge to distribute weight throughout the entire bridge to make it stronger and more efficient. The above bridge is very similar to my planned design. The largest problem with my bridge was that it was not all complete. The side supports were not all present because I did not foresee myself running out of glue so quickly, there fore i had only one side support on each side. If i were to do this project again, I would probably choose to do more of a straight bridge, so that I could mathematically calculate the lengths and strong points of my bridge more efficiently.