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Engineering Structures

Engineering structures is one of the best classes to take at the Engineering Summer Program. The first day of class Mr. Mukai begins by telling the story of the three little pigs and whether or not their structures were descent. Then Mr. Mukai explains the components of building and designing structures. What is a load, what is the best material to make a structure out of, and what the best shape for a structure should be to support the load put upon it? Then Mr. Mukai gives us the challenge of building a bridge out of foam board. There are many constants to building the bridge. The bridge could only be 12 inches tall. (One rule which my partner and I did not follow.) A golf ball also had to be able to roll through the structure from one end to the other, and also pass through the center. The beams could only be two inches tall, four inches wide, and twenty-four inches long. One thing I liked about the project was finding all the loop holes, or using the loop holes to better construct our bridge. Since the beam could only be two inches wide, we made a small gap in the foam board. We spent the next couple of days making and constructing our bridges. On the final day we took our bridges down to one of the smashing labs. There we were able to test how many pounds of pressure our bridge could withstand before buckling. The taller and thicker bridges did the best and held the most weight.

Overall class was a blast. I had so much fun constructing my bridge and then testing it. Mr. Mukai is one of the best professors here. I highly recommend everyone to take this class when entering the Engineering Summer Program.

Let the build-off begin! The best way to learn is to get hands on experience, in this class we learned about structural design. By applying this knowledge we were able to create our own bridges. Who says class can't be fun?

When using sharp objects try to cut the foam bored, not your finger.

Working hard, or hardly working? We'll leave that up to you. (If you chose the second answer, you are wrong.)

What once was a sheet of foam bored starts to take shape.

Almost there! As you will see each bridge takes its own special design based on a trapezoid. This is important because this shape specifically designed to hold a two point load, which is what our bridges were tested for.

Now that's what I call engineering! And what do you do with a finished bridge? You crush it!!!! Can u imagine that these bridges can hold up your own weight? In fact a couple of these bridges held over 600 pounds of pressure.

But it's not all work, we get snack time too. Yeah that's right, snack time!

We work hard, and we play hard! After our classes we take part in rigorously exciting activities like bowling or skating or something along those lines.