FINAL TOOTHPICK BRIDGE CHALLENGE

The purpose of this project was to create the strongest toothpick bridge that can span 25cm. In this project, I worked in a group with Gyubin, Liheng, and Yuri to design and build a toothpick bridge to meet the provided design requirements. And we were to weigh the bridge prior to the final design test.

With links provided by Mr. Mijares, our group were easily able to look at example bridges that have been successfully in the past and choose certain parts of different bridges we were going to combine to build our own original bridge. While we were choosing our design, we were considering the complexity of the bridge, the amount of toothpicks it required, the strength it would have, and the time we had to build the toothpick bridge.

Learning from previous bridge projects, we made sure this time to use triangles, to use less glue, and we knew where to add extra toothpicks to help add strength to the structure and we knew where it would break. To help our group, I shared my ideas to improve the design to make it stronger, Gyubin and I worked together to build the big sides of the bridge and the parts inside to keep the sides together, and I used Liheng's hair dryer to help the bridge dry faster.

Our bridge met all of the requirements: weight, height, span, and strength. Our bridge was 48.4g, 4cm high, the span was 27cm, and it held 14503.4g. After a while, the bridge started to break from the top.

We used triangles in our design and we added more toothpicks in places where it would be most efficient in helping to make our bridge stronger, we measured each toothpick precisely and kept them organized by using labeled plastic bags, and we put in our best efforts to not make our work sloppy. As I mentioned before, our bridge broke from the top, it didn't break from its joints, it only broke because of the heavy weights breaking the toothpicks. I think the best part of working on this project was working together in the group I was in. This time, everybody got along well, we knew how we could help each other, and we knew what exactly needed to be done. I think working in the group of 4 was better than working in partners.

We took our notes of the weights digitally.