Makerspace                                                                                       Thalia Gomez

Hello world,

In Project Lead the Way (PLTW) we are doing modules. The modules are based on pathways we have for high school. Right now the purpose of Project Lead the Way (PLTW) is to decide what our pathway will be in high school, since we are 8 graders and will soon will be 9 graders.

From all the modules I liked the biomedical and engineering modules most. But I decided to write about the engineering module. In the engineering module you get to build a bridge, and try to get it to hold the most weight. The purpose for this module is to understand engineering, realize what engineers do for us, and know the different types of engineers there is.

We were being like civil engineers, because we were building a bridge. Civil engineers build bridges, highways, and work with transportation (etc…). Our constraints were: that bridge had to be 18 inches, 2 inches wide (max.), and 2 inches tall (max.), and couldn’t weigh more than 40 grams.

At the beginning of building our bridge we struggled  for the toothpicks to stay together, for the weight to stay under or at 40 grams, and to make our bridge strong enough to at least hold 3,000 grams. Which was our goal, for our bridge didn’t look strong enough to begin with. While building the bridge we tested a lot of ideas for our bridge to be strong. In the Design Process of building a bridge, we liked and disliked a lot of designs, but then we decided to use triangles and 3 sturdy poles.

The poles are used for support, and the triangles are used to stand all the weight, but the poles support so the bridge won’t break and bend too much. Our bridge was built with the 3 poles at the bottom separated a little bit, and the triangles on top for the poles support.At the end our bridge ended up holding 4,300 grams which was the most grams any bridge can hold because we only had a limited amount of weights.

In this module you need the skill of patience, time management, and the most important team work. It might seem really easy but you will notice that by yourself you will not complete that much because building a bridge is really hard. Due to the time, because you might not have enough time, and it’s also really exhausting to stick and keep sticking back toothpicks because the glue might not be strong enough.