Week 3
Project Evaluation responses:
Describe the plan your group used to build the project.
We decided to split up the work. Izzy and Aaron were going to start the building of the bridge while Matthew and Kyuhyun decided to model the bridge in Model 3D and the other group's bridge in TinkerCAD. Kunal did the math of the model bridge.
How did you incorporate the Design strategies from the textbook (Ch 21-26)?
One major design strategy that we used was the strategies on successful teamwork on pages 493-494. We used the idea of assigning clear roles and work assignments a lot, dividing up the work needed to be done on the bridge between groups of people. We also communicated a lot and made decisions with the agreement of the whole team. Another design strategy we used was the “Systematic Approach” detailed on pages 485 - 486. When coming up with the design for the bridge, we came up with many designs, eventually settling on what seemed the most simple and efficient, and then built the bridge. We also used the advice on “How to manage a design team project” on page 490, as we made sure to set deadlines and keep working methodically on all parts of the design.
Describe the process your group used to accomplish the task.
After Kyuhyun and Matthew modeled the bridge in Model 3d. Izzy and Aaron started building the bridge. Meanwhile, Kunal was doing calculations to build the virtual bridge in the online simulation. Then Kyuhyun and Matthew joined in on the building of the bridge
Describe how the principles you used to build the project and apply to the engineering fields you studied.
In this project we used civil and materials engineering. The materials engineering applied to the type of materials we used to build the bridge, which was balsa wood and hot glue. We had to evaluate the strength of these materials and adjust to fit our design. We also used civil engineering to design our structure: we used trusts and the wooden planks to try to strengthen the structure.
Each member’s role in the project.
Kyuhyun and Matthew worked on the Tinkercad and Model 3D. Kunal worked on the trusses of the bridge and did the math calculations for the bridge. Our teacher assistant, Prahelika, guided Aaron and Izzy on the construction of the entire bridge.
Describe the successes and the obstacles your team encountered and how your team overcame the obstacles.
We achieved our goal of getting the cart with a singular brick across the bridge. The planning and Model 3D was a great success. However, the execution of the planning included multiple obstacles. Our obstacles were the extremely flawed design, poor use and management of materials, and instability of the bridge’s base.
What would your next steps be to improve your project?
We would take more time to make an accurate design of our bridge, and not change it mid-building. Also, we would use our wooden planks for the base of our bridge, rather than the legs/bottom structure. In all, we needed to plan more before we began building.
Describe the lessons that you learned and how you will apply these lessons to future projects.
The lesson that we learned is to take our time with big projects. We built our bridge too quickly, which led to a lot of errors. Next time we will take our time and double check everything. The other lesson that we learned is to have a plan that we all agree on before creating the bridge or project. We didn’t all have the same idea of what the bridge was going to look like and this led to some confusion.
Knowing what you know now, how would you start your project differently?
Knowing what we know now, we would have completely changed our design. Our support system used 7 planks, and this ultimately led to our design being very weak. This really hurt our bridge, and it caused us to only support one brick. Outside of having a better design we could have built the bridge more slowly and thought out each step better. We used so much glue to attach each piece that we ran out of glue.
Technical questions:
How did you settle on the final design of your bridge?
How did you measure the bridge’s parts?
What improvements can you make to your bridge’s design?
Did you run into any problems during the construction of your bridge?
Did you have to take apart any parts of your bridge?
How did you decide to make your bridge’s support system?
What roles did all of you take in the bridge building process?
How did you test your bridge? Did you test it with the cart?
How did you manage the use of materials? Did you run out of any?
End-user Questions:
What material would you have used if you had built your bridge in real life?
How many bricks did your bridge hold?
What was your favorite part of building the bridge?
Would you change your bridge if you could? What would you change?
How was designing your bridge in Model 3D?
Do you think your bridge would still work at a full scale?
How do you feel after testing your bridge?
What was your least favorite part of this project?
How did you settle on the final design of your bridge?