Support Line

In the first unit of my final junior year term, our primary focus has been on triangles and how they coincide with bridges. Before we get into the second half of the unit (Bridges) we need to look at triangles.
First we already know about triangles right? Wrong. You know about how angles work in triangles or maybe the Pythagorean Theorem but have you heard of Sine, Cosine, and Tangent? I didn't either. But now, I went through the anguishing journey of finding Sine (Opp/Hypo) Cosine (Adj/Hypo) and Tangent (Opp/Adj) then we find out about Cosine Theta + Inverse Cosine and Sine Theta + Inverse Sine laws. We use all of these to find the angle and side values of any triangles. Soon after we started the talks of how in most large bridges triangles are a commonality. Triangles are used to give the most possible support to the structure while having the least possible dead space. Which leads me into my next (Point? Idea? Assignment?) thing; we (my class) were asked to create bridges out of popsicle sticks and Elmer's glue. 
The thing is, we actually had to make truss bridges (Bridges that use triangles) and I was too far into mine to realize I had made a beam bridge instead... Anyways, we needed it to hold 10lbs over a one foot gap for ten seconds. Mine lasted so long it wasn't worth counting how long it was in position.


To end out this blog entry/ action project I wanted to reflect a little bit. I'll be honest I kind of cheated using a very different type of bridge even if it just has one truss in the middle kind of for show but I also cheated in the sense that I've done this type of project in the past and if I want to become an architect, I sure hope I know a little bit about how it works. The gluing took forever and I made mine too long but still managed to only use half of the allotted sticks to make a very effective bridge. I also wanted to mention the Golden Gate bridge because it seemed to be a good view point when I was looking into bridges this unit because even if the math was difficult and new, a good portion of the real-world side was review for me. I'm sure it was all new for a number of my classmates but I do wish I could have looked into the construction of bridges rather than the components. Anyways this has been a hard unit and I look forward to the next one. Have a good day, night, or whenever you are reading this.

-CDH

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