november 28 2009

The bridges have been finished on paper and I have a total of 6 bridges on paper to be constructed. The first bridge I will begin to construct is the Pratt truss. I plan to create one bridge in a day and let it dry over night and tomorrow when they have completely dried I will join the two faces of the bridges.

November 27 2009

Today I purchased all the materials and began working on the actual designing of the bridges. The bridge faces will be constructed on a 16" by 6" piece of paper. The bridges that I decided to do include the arch bridge, Pratt truss, warren truss, my own designed truss bridge as well as a rigid frame and a plain girder beam bridge. After they are drawn on paper I will begin to cut and place the pieces of Basswood in the correct placement.

November 25 2009

Today I completed the first group of slides that introduce the project these slides include the

• Introduction
• hypothesis
• question problem
• materials
• variables
• procedure

Next step is to purchase the materials and begin to construct the bridges.

November 24 2009 - Day 1

November 24, 2009 marks the first day in the beginning of a new science fair experiment. Today a group of students and I visited Dr. Yildirim at the University of Texas at Austin's Civil Engineering Department. He will be guiding us through the creation of our project as we journey through them. During our meeting we discussed the several projects that the group of students and I will be taking on in the next couple of weeks. As of today I have begun to think of how I may be able to further improve my previous Bridge project, if not collaborate it with a new more advanced study of the effects of bridge design on their weight bearing capacity. My goal for this week is to begin and complete building these bridges so that I am able to test them as soon as possible. During this process I will update this blog with new pictures and information on my research and my current position on this project.