Right now I'm ecstatic! I entered a model bridge building contest sponsored by BSCES(Boston Society of Civil Engineers Section) with two of my cousins and a friend, and we built a bridge for it(well yeah, it figures). Anyways, if you don't want to hear the ramblings of an ecstatic fools, you can just hit the back button on your browser. So anyways, bridges had to be made with manilla folders and elmers white glue ONLY and had to weigh less than a pound. It also had to span at least 36 inches. We made our bridge last second, on the last two days before the competition. It weighed in at 441 grams on the day of the competition. We were pretty pessimistic about it, and didn't expect our bridge to hold much weight. We ending up being the last team to go, and we loaded the bridge with weight. We were amazed by the results. We managed to get 180 pounds of weight on it before the bridge finally collasped, bringing us into first place by 75 pounds. We were.... well amazed and ecstatic (that word is fun to use). Now, I get to get out of school on friday before break early, because I get to go to an awards luncheon.
Just thought I'd ramble on about my happy win.
~Cheuq
ID:188677
 Feb 8 2004, 3:57 pm
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Feb 8 2004, 4:05 pm
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Garthor
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How about a picture?
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Congratulations, now you've just got to figure out how you did it ;P
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Excellent work! Congratulations.
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Didn't you study Procratinareon's Theorem? It states that the strength of the bridge is inversely proportional to the amount of time before the contest is judged.
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Hmm... picture of the bridge -- lemme muster one up... (pretend im pausing here for a while) Pictures are a wee bit big (400-500 kb each), but theres only 5 (I just threw this together). Even though the bridge looks simple (indeed it is actually), it's nice and strong. You can't see it, but if you see how the road bed on top is made, under the flaps are these rods made of three manilla folders, rolled really tightly. Let's see, the guy in the grey shirt is me, the short girl is my cousin, the guy wearing white and black sleeves is my other cousin, and the other guy is sa friend. (No names here, Muahahahah). Anyways -> heres a link Click
Anyone in the picture that's not asian is a judge... or someone random.. In the last picture, as you can see, the bridge got pretty beat up after it died on us... =P I apologize for not flipping the pictures, I really didn't feel like opening photoshop or photoeditor -- oh well. ~Cheuq | |
Nice design, the weight limit makes a big diffrence. I would have done it much diffrent, but i would have gone over the weight limit for sure.
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Sweet! The only similar contest I've ever entered was a model solar boat competition... you buy a bunch of solar panels and put them on the boat and hooked them up to a motor and propeller. No switch; you made it stop by holding a shirt over it. =) A lot of people used wood, but I used polystyrene - really nasty, messy stuff to work with, but it meant it was pretty fast. Until about halfway through the race, I was thrashing everyone in my category; but the propeller was partly positioned with sticky tape after some last-minute repair work. =P It had metal coathanger "whiskers" to guide it along the lane ropes, which saved it for a bit, but eventually it turned directly to face the lane ropes. By the time a race assistant had prodded it with a long pole so it was facing the right way, everyone else was way ahead. Came second-last by about 5cm.
That was annoying, but not as much as one of the other boats (in a different heat); its owner had used lego gears to give himself an edge. The boat was halfway when its nearest rival was a quarter of the way. But then one of the gears fell off into the pool. He (the owner) didn't even finish the race! And I don't think he ever got his gear back either. Anyway, enough of my rambling. Congratulations! | |
Your face and the girls next to you just needs a little thought bubble with the words "WTH!?!" in. That would be funny :)
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Jeez! That's almost DOUBLE my weight! I weigh 98 pounds. Sweet bridge!
~Ease~ | |
What are manilla folders? is that like ......paper material?
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I have a CO2-rocket car that I built in shop class. We actually hooked it up to a mini air tunnel (stuck a fan in one end, placed a stick of burning incense in front of the fan, then watched the smoke go over the car) and my car was the most aerodynamic of the class.
The problem? I drilled the wheels wrong. The front wheel is unfortunately skewed at a very small angle. When we tried to launch it, the car wound up pulling to the right and dragging on the line until it reached the end of the track at a terribly low speed. =P | |
I made one of those in 8th grade. When we raced them they went on a wire guided track, and I have the strangest feeling mine would never have made it to the end without the wire. My little blue(and I do mean little, there was absolutely no excess wood on this thing)car had a strange affinity for flipping onto its roof as soon as the race started, now these cheap plastic wheels actually slow your car down as I found out, because on my 3 layers of blue paint and 5 layers of clear coat, the car blew every other car away, they were actually complaining that I cheated because my car flipped over everytime.
I lost though, because my car went too fast and busted the front axel off when it jammed up under the padding in the wooden stopper and hit the back. | |
Aye, I've got a picture of me and my CO2 car right on my desk right now, if my scanner was working - I'd upload it.
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I'm in 8th grade now and that's what we're doing this year in "Technology"
6th grade- model plane, model rocket (one teacher only, same project for both) 7th grade- (teacher 1)Build a bridge out of "coffee stirrers" (teacher 2) design a house using some cool software 8th grade- (teacher 1)CO2 car (teacher 2) Make a commercial For 7th&8th grade, we go with 1 teacher for 3 weeks than swap. | |