/sci/ - Science & Math

http://www.philohome.com/bridge/bridge.htm

Take notes. Sometimes there's just no substitute for raw muscle.

>>3950197
turn the basswood into string, then make a suspension bridge.

>mfw I remember my bridge being a total failure

Don't give up OP, make sure that the joints are COMPLETELY SEALED together.

just put triangles all over the place man

fuckin triangles man

they're strong

Simplicity = Efficiency

Don't overcomplicate

>>3950257

This, sorta.

90-angles are the strongest.

>>3950257
You mean like this?

We did this with dry spaghetti noodles in junior high. My group made really nice support/leg deals because we thought the weight would go across the entire bridge.

But no. Fucking teacher hangs a weight in the fucking middle. So these fucking retards who made the bridge out of straight noodles supported by a single noodle at each vertex.

What. The. Fuck.

>>3950285

>those fucking retards won
>but whose laughing now?
>not me apparently

ITT: Bridge Design/Building Stories

GET IN HERE BROS

this thread makes me laugh

>>3950290

>>3950302

>high school
>bridge building contest
>plain rules
>decide to glue beams together whilst implanting paperclips in the middle

>day of contest
>bridge breaks
>clips revealed
>mfw I remembered this

your failures will happen at a joint

use a lot of a really high quality glue
make your joint seems as perfect as possible, get jiggy with sand paper etc.

let your glue cure for a long amount of time, the more time the better

if you don't have to make a joint, dont do it

my .02

>>3950285
>>3950316
Wow. /sci/ has a lot of issues.

>>3950316
Be thankful you didn't win.

>>3950285
>engineer fails to review testing requirements
>engineer gets butt hurt when he fails tests.

>>3950337
/sci/ always takes shortcuts but they end up further behind.

>>3950302

>walk into physics class
>see girl who sits next to me
>be beta, try to say hi
>NOPE.jpg
>alpha guy who likes her stands up, stares at me
>get scared
>spaghetti falls out of my pocket
>today is the day to build bridges out of spaghetti
>spaghetti still falling out of my pocket
>everyone stares at me
>suddenly, bitcheslovespaghetti.jpg
>give everyone free spaghetti
>everyone loves me
>alpha wants to beat me up still

>mfw

>>3950285
>>3950316
>>3950348

not a bridge, but related
>groups of four
>we all have twenty or so pieces of uncooked spaghetti, some tape, some string, and a marshmallow
>goal is to build the tallest free standing structure out of the shit
>retard team wants to make cylinders out of the stuff and stack it
>the fuck man
>i know how triangles work
>make a four sided pyramid
>hailed as an engineering god
>downside is everyone thought i was autistic or something the rest of the year

>>3950380
similar:

>20' string from end to end
>straws, 2 balloons and tape
>goal: cross over and back
>Solution: fit each baloon facing two directions, second baloon for the back trip is tucked under first balloon.

>first try, whiz bang, it goes, and comes back.
>FUCKING TEACHER ISNT LOOKING

>second try, goes over, comes 75% back. fucking B or some shit.

no one else managed to do it, and I had to go explain how it was done. That was fun.

>>3950269

In my middle school science class, we had to make bridges out of balsa wood. My design looked like pretty much the first stage of this image. My bridge had the best weight to strength ratio. It only failed because the glue at one of the junctions broke.

>>3950353
>>>/r9k/

I positively dominated the fucking bridge assignment. Everyone else was like, "derp, build 2 trusses then connect them together like a box," when I realized that having your bridge's cross-section as nothing but a rectangle is a sure-fire way to make it parallelogram on you.

4 diagonal crossbeams, and suddenly I had a bridge that supported all the weight they had, a whole shelf of textbooks, AND a Vietnamese classmate before it finally pancaked.

I remember doing the toothpick bridge in middle school. I got second place to a bridge that was made by these two fucking perfectionists. Their bridge was so strong that it flexed enough for the sand bucket (held by a bar in the middle as in OP's situation) touched the floor. It only broke when the teacher tried to lift the table up so more sand could be added. It probably would have supported more, but the jolt from setting the table down was too much. They made the side supports out of this weird criss-crossing triangle lattice type pattern. You want it to be really symmetrical OP, otherwise the legs will break in a sort of twisting motion because of unequally distributed weight. In my bridge and the winner's bridge, it was only the toothpicks under the bar that broke, not the structure.