This Wednesday, July 1, the engineering focus area explored a variety of bridge structures, and were given the chance to construct their own models.
The afternoon class started off with a presentation from Patsy Rawlins. Rawlins was a governor’s scholar at Morehead in 2013, and now works for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KTC) as a
Transportation Engineer.
“As part of the cabinet’s work we go to schools and stuff all over our district… they’re gonna build a truss bridge which is one of the strongest bridges there are,” Rawlins said.
The organization offers scholarships to college students from freshman to senior year, and also provides students with engineering jobs in Kentucky after their graduation.
Following the presentation, the scholars moved into another room where they split off into groups of four to five people. The scholars were focused on designing and constructing bridges. The type of bridges they were building, truss bridges, utilize a triangular structure to better distribute weight and hold up heavy loads. Rawlins explained that triangles are able to support their own weight, whereas squares collapse inward on themselves. The scholars spent ten minutes planning and designing their bridge, and thirty minutes actually constructing their designs with K’NEX.
Some groups organized their K’NEX pieces first, while others dove right into the construction. There was much variance both in design and in technique, as the groups approached the challenge differently.
Early on, Rawlins predicted that the group at the center table, group two, would be able to hold up the most weight. “The most important thing about trusses is the triangles, so if you notice, everything about theirs is very uniform,” Rawlins said.
With only seven minutes remaining, group two made the decision to start over.
“We couldn’t add diagonals in the original design.. We changed pretty fast, we changed three times,” group member Trisha said.
One by one, each group moved to test their bridges. A representative from each group would come forward and choose which bags to put into the bucket. Some groups chose to jump straight to the ten pound bag, while others started small with one or two pounds. Whatever the bridge was able to hold before it collapsed was what counted toward the group’s score.
Group one was the first to test their bridge, and their bridge was able to hold up thirty pounds before it collapsed.
Despite their redesign, group two’s bridge collapsed as soon as they added a ten pound bag, so it was counted as holding up no weight.
Group three was next, and their bridge was able to hold five pounds.
“The biggest hardship we faced was not having much experience with this building material, it was hard to come up with a design without knowing how the pieces connect,” said group member Jenna.
“[We overcame that by] taking a step back from the building and assessing the materials at hand. We had to start relying on our team and most importantly listening to them,” Jenna said. Group four’s bridge was able to hold the entire forty pounds.
“I think we did as good as we could for the materials… [and I’m proud of us for] working together,” group member Jack said.
Following the exercise, the class returned to their classroom to learn about the various scholarship and job opportunities available through the KTC.
