For one of our modules, my partner and I (Cindy) chose to do the engineering module. We didn’t think it would be that much of a challenge, but we had different thoughts when we actually read what we had to do. What we had to engineer was far from easy.

Before I talk about our challenge for engineering, I will talk about what we did to lead up to the challenge. On challenge 1 of this module, we had to interview someone who is in the engineering field in college or someone who is in the engineering pathway at my school. During lunch, my partner and I went to interview the student of the engineering pathway. We asked them questions like Why did you choose this pathway?, What do you do in this pathway?, and What do you think are the advantages of taking this pathway?. After doing this interview, my partner and I started to get another perspective of engineering.

Once our challenge 1  was done, we moved on to challenge 2 of the module which was twice the challenge than the first one if I say so myself. We were asked in this challenge to make a bridge out of toothpicks and regular Elmer’s glue. At this point, my partner and I were kind of nervous for what our ending result of this challenge would be.

Like in the real world of engineering, we had to make a design brief and a technical drawing before we could actually make the bridge. If an engineer went and made a bridge without a plan, then it wouldn’t be a good bridge. So, we had to treat this project like it was a real life situation. After lots of thinking about our design, we finally made our design brief and our technical drawing.

Now, it was on to the hard part of this project. Making the bridge. My partner and I first started bundling up toothpicks so we could later on have a strong bridge. After we made what felt like a hundred of those, we made the toothpicks into lots of triangles that would later come together to make a trapezoid for the side of the bridge. After completing this, we repeated the process. Finally, we added the finishing touches of our bridge. We measured it, weighed it, and found out how many grams it could hold.

In conclusion, this module was a challenge. Although it was, my partner and I went through it together and finished it. We accomplished this challenge with teamwork and hard work. This challenge has given me another perspective and I can actually see myself doing something with engineering in my future.