Final Toothpick Bridge Challenge

design idea

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The purpose of this project was to create the strongest toothpick bridge that could span 25 cm.

The directions were to work in a group to design and build a tootpick bridge that meets the provided design requirements. Then to weigh the bridge prior to the final design test.

In our team, we searched the internet to find a design that we all thought would not be too difficult to make and that would hold a lot of weight. We chose a design that had a curved structure because the bridge had to be a few cm above the standing point, and we thought a curved shape would be a good way to go about that. (The photo we went off of is in the photo slides).

From all of the previous designs that we created, we made sure that the supports the bridge had, touched the toothpicks and not the glue. And this time, we did not use a lot of glue because we needed the bridge to dry fast, and so that the bridge did not weigh a lot (the bridge had to hold more than what it weighed).

My role in this project was to take pictures of the progress, to held with building specific parts of the bridge, and to dry the pieces when needed. I feel that in our group, we did not have specific jobs, but instead we all worked together as a team.

Our bridge met all of the design criteria. In total, the bridge held 9,386.61kg. We were the second group to test our bridge, the first bridge collapsed because it could not hold the weight. So we continued testing the same. But after a while, we ran out of stuff to put into the basket (the pictures show the random stuff we put into the basket). And then it turned out the basket was on the verge on breakage, and not the bridge. We decided that we would stop there and later on try to test the bridges durability with textbooks. Because of us, the teams that went after us, had it easier because instead of using items, they put textbooks into the basket until they reached the breaking point of the bridge. After all the teams did their testing, it was our turn again. A vey nice classmate (Sy), thought it would be a good idea to just out all the textbooks at once and see how the bridge did from there. Obviously it broke. Thank you for your help Sy. So technically, our bridge did not collapse, and the photos of it broken was just because too much weight was put onto it at once, and it collapsed not it the way it naturally would if we added the textbooks one by one.

What made our bridge very strong in my opinions were the supports we put in. We added a lot of vertical toothpicks which supported the weight of the items it had to hold. Also, since we decided not to cut the toohpicks knowing from experience that it would be beneficial, the toothpicks overlapped and made the structure stronger.

The interesting thing about this testing is that our bridge did not have a weak point since it did not break until we put too much weight at once onto it.

I really enjoyed this activity because our bridge would not break, which made it really cool because I think everyone in our team felt as if we succeeded. I would enjoy doing something similar to this again.