Week Four - Greenwood

Week three was both a very productive and very informative lab.  The main focus of the lecture and the rest of the class was the cost efficiency of our bridges.  It was made clear to us (through COMP1) that we could not get a contract without proposing a cheap and effective way to create a bridge.  Therefore, our group sat down to begin discussing how we would go about slicing the cost of our bridge design.  Originally, our pricing was somewhere around $350,000.  We considered this to be outrageous, and proceeded to test out different materials and designs.  Eventually, we came up with a successful design which brought our pricing to around $215,000.  We are not yet finished though, and over the next couple weeks we will implement what we have learned into creating the best design we can.

Throughout this module so far, we have been using West Point Bridge Designer, an engineering simulator program which uses an easy interface to let the user first build a bridge and then test it.  The test itself allows a truck to try and drive over the created bridge.  It lets you know where the most tension is in the bridge, or if the truck even feels safe enough to cross it at all.  This tool has been extremely useful for our team, in that we have been able to send our designs back and forth to each other even outside of lab for examination and critique.  It is even a great tool for presenting what I have learned so far.  For example, today in English class I was talking to another student about my bridge design and my professor asked me to stand up and talk about the project.  He was not being sarcastic, but he was truly interested.  I proceeded to show the class my design and its animation, as well as discussing what I have learned so far in the module.  WPBD has been an extremely helpful tool inside and outside of lab.