collaboration

Collaboration for Extra Credit

Students may e-mail Mr. Brown or Mr. Meakim to add a useful tip to the collaboration page. It is hoped that students who need help with their bridges may find it here.

Useful Tips from 2009

Students	School	Useful Tip
James & Frankie	Haverford School	Try lowering the parts that don’t have any red or blue.
Ben B.	Haverford School	Try building your bridge with all triangles to make it strong.
Guy W.	Haverford School	I found bending the steal bars sometimes helps lower the cost of your bridge. To start you select the arrow tool and click on the bar you want to bend, then hold and move your mouse the direction you want to bend.
Jonas	Haverford School	If you would like to improve your bridge, click "select all" icon then the "decrease member size" icon. After testing the bridge, if some members do not cooperate, improve them and the repeat the process. If the bridge still works, repeat the process.
Cameron M.	Haverford School	If one of your members is affecting another make the one that is affecting the other bigger in size.

Useful Tips from 2007

Students	School	Useful Tip
Faasel K.	Haverford School	Spend the money to excavate or dig at the beginning because that makes the span smaller and you will use fewer and smaller steel members.
Jon B.	Haverford School	When making a pier bridge if you use a height divisible by 4 (4, 8, 12, etc.) your pier will be in the center of your bridge instead of slightly to the left.
Cal S.	Haverford School	Use the Member List and Load Test Results on the right side of the drawing board to check tension, compression and make small changes to individual steel member cost.
Cameron I.	Haverford School	When building a pier bridge that is not centered you should keep the steel members lower on the left side which is smaller leading up to the pier support.
Rudy M.	Haverford School	Hollow tubes may cost more, but since they are lighter (in kilograms) you actually spend less money for them.
Gregory B.	Haverford School	I have found that using a curved truss instead of a square or sharp angle design tends to hold up better and cost less.
Jack E.	Haverford School	Jack says to start your design off at 24 meters above the water and use arch abutments with lots of small steel tubes to get onto the scoreboard.

Useful Tips from 2006

Students	School	Useful Tip
Maddy	M.L.	With some designs you can make a cheaper bridge with a high grade.
Rachel	M.L.	Your design should have larger hollow tubes on the outside, and smaller on the inside.
Annie	M.L.	You can lower the price by moving the joints.
Eric S.	H.S.	A good tip is to look to make the members on your bridge that have no tension or compression problems smaller in millimeters.
Mario M.	H.S.	Sometimes smaller hollow tubes cost more than bigger hollow tubes, and they can be stronger.

Useful Tips from 2005

Students	School	Useful Tip
1. Matthew P.	Haverford	1. When you build your bridge, you should make the outer members of the design thicker, and the inside members thinner to save money.
2. Remi Y. & Andrew H.	Haverford	2. When you build your bridge, use the high resolution grid (an icon with tiny squares in the upper right). You can lower your joints very little, saving money, while making your bridge still work.
3. Grant B.	Haverford	3. I have found that solid bars work better for tension problems than hollow tubes.
4. Kevin	Medford Lakes	4. If you have an odd number of joints, raising the middle one will make the members on the inside of the design weaker.
5. Max	Medford Lakes	5. Use colors (red unsafe in compression & blue unsafe in tension) after the load test to see which ones you can lower.

Two brains are better than one!

Some useful Web sites to explore:

Building Big: All About Bridges
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/bridge/

NOVA Online: Super Bridges
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bridge/

Bridge Designer – Johns Hopkins University
http://www.jhu.edu/virtlab/bridge/truss.htm

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