Week 4: WPBD

West point bridge design program is an excellent novel program that aids in bridge designing. It helps the student understand the physics behind a bridge and the constraints that go behind building one. gravity, fluctuating weight distribution, how the weight of the bridge itself comes into affect. WPBD gives you a plethera of options on what to build the bridge with but the our assignment was to build the most cost effective bridge. The group as a whole was forced to brainstorm and methodically weigh our options, according to the constraints of building the bridge and out budget.
WPBD does not accurately portray the full range of affects on a bridge, while a bridge may last in WPBD, it is not necessary that it will last at all in reality, yes, WPBD does take into some of the natural affects on a bridge but it cannot accurately portray all of them. A real civil engineer would need to do countlessly more calculations.

Last week in class we compared the groups individual designs, and created one design that we thought worked best and was the most cost effective design. What, we learned is that for bridge to work, it doesn't have to be complex, but rather simple. Smaller rods with a  solid steel rod outer and a hollow rod inner works alot better than a full solid steel rod bridge, it also costs alot less. We all came together with what we knew individually and created a bridge we thought was best of all worlds. This week we will start to build our bridge that we designed with KNEX..