Engineering Projects/Bridges/Howard Community College/fall2011/501 DAS/Week 2 (Sept. 26 - Sept. 30, 2011)

This week our team worked on actually building the bridge. We started with gluing skinny long spaghettis as the arch part of the bridge. We failed, because it was really hard to cut them the exact same size. In addition, it took a long time for epoxy to dry up and the spaghettis didn't stick one another since we didn't hold them tied until the glue completely dry. We realized that it was almost impossible to build the bridge without an exact measurement of each part of the bridge. Therefore, we decided to figure out the exact measurement and sketch it on a big piece of paper. Then we can follow the bridge on the paper to build the real one. It will be more acurate and much easier. Besides, we decided to use Ditalini pasta instead of the type we used before to build the arch. For the glue part, we wanted to try glue gun because it dries faster than epoxy. However, in the presentation, Professor Foerster suggested to use epoxy not glue gun. We still want to test it using glue gun. And maybe code epoxy on top. At the same time, we were also looking for bridge test software. We couldn't find free helpful testing software.