This six weeks my groups worked on our topographic map, and the engineering module. For the discussion, we had to describe what engineering meant to us. To me, engineering is the use of tools and talent to invent and make things, then send them out to the public to make people’s lives easier.
For Challenge 1 we interviewed an engineering student, Jessica. She spoke about wanting to be an engineer to help people very passionately, and she really had an amazing story. We were really inspired by her, and it was really a great start to our module.
For Challenge 2, we built a bridge made entirely of toothpicks, glue, and thread. At first we came up with a truss style bridge, and we started building the triangles. Because we had a limited amount of time, we realized about half way through that our process was going too slow, and we wouldn’t finish the module in time. So, we quickly switched from a truss bridge to a sort of log bridge, which was a much sturdier and hardy design in the end, and I think it held more weight than the truss bridge ever could have.

Finally, we did a testing report. We put our bridge in between a gap that was 16 inches long. The testing report turned out as follows:
Testing Report:
Hypothesis: It will hold 500 grams.
Log style bridge.
Weighs: 39.5/40.0
Length: 19 inches
Ending amount it can hold: 800 grams!

We were really happy with the weight it could hold, because we estimated that it could only hold about 500 grams. It never broke in half and it turned out to be very successful!
From this module, I learned more about how to problem solve and how to make something out of limited materials. One thing we could have done better is that we should have looked ahead better, and calculated how much time we had versus our idea. But overall I think that we did a great job.