End of Week 2

The Structures and Material Science class has made significant progress in the first two weeks of building as bridges are finally coming together. I personally have been able to make a lot of progress. My bridge design is composed of 52 crossed braced trusses. In the first two weeks, I have surprisingly been able to complete all 52 crossed braced trusses. I believed that I would need more time to build all the trusses, but my strong effort has put me almost four days ahead of schedule. In the coming weeks, I will be able to spend more time carefully gluing all the trusses together to form my bridge. Overall, the first two weeks of bridge building have run very smoothly.

Crossed Braced Trusses:



While I have been lucky to have run into no problems, John Clapp has suffered from a few setbacks. In the first two weeks, John planned to construct the trapezoid shaped sidewalls. However, the odd angles of the supports within the trapezoid forced John to have to change his design. This was a very beneficial change for John as it allowed for both easier construction and overall a stronger design. In the days to follow John was faced with yet another setback. John found that cutting the notches into the beams was extremely time consuming due to the exact precision needed to cut the notch into the beam. This setback put John slightly more behind schedule, however, he gained more experience with every notch. At the end of the first two weeks, John was eventually able to complete both sidewalls for his bridge. Overall, John ran into several setbacks in the first two weeks, but he has been able to learn a lot during that time, which will allow him to be much more efficient in the weeks to come.

Sidewall:


-Charlie Clapp