EG 498A:
Introduction
Multidisciplinary
Engineering Design
Laboratory
Individual Project Concept Study:
Building Bridges
Wendy Mores
Démian Nave
Advisor: Jay Brockman
September 8, 1995
The purpose of this report is to present my individual idea for a Legos project. This idea will eventually be discussed within my group and possibly chosen as our group project for the semester.
My idea
I propose that we have a lego bridge building contest. Freshmen groups would be given a standard set of building blocks. Each group would use civil (and related mechanical) engineering principles to try and construct a bridge with the fewest legos that supported the most weight. As an added challenge, the groups would have to build a stress sensor onto the bridge for testing purposes (the TA's for the class, or our group in this case, would construct a machine to put force on the bridges until the legos come apart). The students would be presented with a formula (something like SCORE=((k*(height-10) + j*(span length-10))/blocks)^(weight supported). While in a real engineering situation the height and span length are probably not actual variables, I believe this formula would lead to greater experimentation. It would give freshman a chance to try out a little math (such as taking a derivative) to determine how to maximize his/her group's score.
As incoming freshmen, the students do not know much about engineering. I think this kind of project would allow the students to integrate Physics 127 principles along with Math 125 concepts (and still give a great degree of flexibility for the students). The students would not be overwhelmed with advanced concepts they do not understand (which may also be quite difficult to exactly demonstrate with legos), although they would still pick up basic concepts of civil and mechanical engineering.
One particular advantage of this type of project is that it will not require special equipment. The students will not be forced to learn programming at the same time that they are working on the projects. There will be less opportunity for something to go wrong in terms of the setup breaking. Also, because this project requires so few advanced parts (such as the controller board and motors), it would be very affordable (at least compared to other legos projects I could dream up).
There are disadvantages with this type of project as well. The primary problem from our group's perspective is that we do not have a civil engineer among us. Perhaps this idea would be better suited for a group that did have one, although I think the true test of a freshman engineering project is whether any incoming student can complete it.
All three of us in our group have taken the required freshman courses (Math, Physics, Chemistry, even EG120). We should be able to finish any one of these projects as easily as any incoming freshman. Another disadvantage of this project is that it does not involve a lot of bells and whistles. One might expect that with very fancy kits, we might want to have the freshmen actually do stress tests themselves.
This is a valid point. I would like to be able to include the advanced components in this project, but I believe it is much more practical the way I have described it. Perhaps this would be a good early semester lab--kind of an introduction to legos used for engineering.
Conclusion
Building bridges will provide a good introduction to the engineering method for students. They will be forced to apply real-world principles (balancing expensive building materials versus the need for a strong bridge). They will be able to use the limited coursework they have done thus far in analyzing the forces on their design (Physics) and the best way to take advantage of the scoring equation (Math). The lab should be easily completable in two or three weeks (including the competition phase) and the materials should be relatively inexpensive. And of course, the students will have fun at the same time.