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Safety
If you've
followed along so far, you've just built your first bridge.
Congratulations! Now we're going to test it. The
most important thing to do during testing is to have an adult present
and to use safety techniques: such as wearing eye and foot protection,
have an adult help you place weights, and never, ever lift weights you
can't handle.
After
safety, the most important thing you can do is videotape your tests.
That way you can see the problems much more easily. Figuring out
what happened by watching a videotape is a lot easier than searching
through scraps of balsa wood that have just been crushed by 300 pounds
of steel.
Below is an
example test run from the video. Here, we built a bridge from a
very light grade of balsa wood. In fact, the balsa was so light
that the bottom chord tore and shot the "End Post" out from the bridge
like an arrow! For a brief moment, the bridge was supporting all
the weight on just three legs!
Well, this
is the end of the elementary part of the Website. If you want to
understand some math behind bridge building, you might want to look at
the advanced topics section that
Sabrina did. If you want to see some more tests, as well as get
some more tips, please consider buying our
video. Either way, we'd like to
hear from you.
We hope you
enjoyed the Website!
Katherine and Sabrina
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