Bridges!
/The Sea Lions have been hard at work over the past two weeks, exploring bridges together! We started by talking about the concept (both metaphorical and physical) of bridges. What are they? How do they help us? How does the concept of bridges fit into all the things we’ve learned this year? The Sea Lions spent time coming up with answers to these questions during a rousing community discussion that included a discussion of the things they wondered about bridges. See a photo of their thoughts below!
After that, the Sea Lions began engineering their first bridge, concentrating on Beam Bridge designs. Their explorations included a design using an accordion fold (hey, that makes triangles!) as well as Box Girder folds. They tested their designs, paying special attention to how the bridge held forces of compression and tension. After discussion of the superstructure of the bridge, we began to look at the design of piers, exploring and testing what shape makes the best pier? The Sea lions discovered that a cylindrical shape was the sturdiest design for a substructure because of the way it held compression and tension loads more evenly.
On Friday, we began to explore trusses. After some testing of different shapes, we discovered that the strongest truss shape is the triangle because of the way it uses compression and tension together to create strength and stability using less material than a normal Beam Bridge. Next week we’ll be creating our own trusses as well as exploring both Arch and Suspension Bridges!
