Ant Bridge

Our group decided that we needed to come up with two small, but different designs and put them to the test to find out which worked best.  Eric and Jack took one approach, while Michael and Nick took another.  Nick took pride in his design which was later named Ant Bridge due to its minuscule size.  Ant Bridge was designed by using a base of posicle sticks guled together with five single popsicle sticks coming to a center point above, and then pieces of string were added to the bottom of the bridge to help with tension.  Ant Bridge weighed 54 grams.  It was 20 centimeters in lenthgh, 12 centimeters in width, and 9 centimeters tall.  Ant Bridge failed at 75 pounds.  The length of Ant Bridge also contributed to its high holding capacity.  Ant bridge was a very short bridge, therefore the force (tau) was smaller due to the very short radius for the force to be applied.  Another reason Ant Bridge was successful, was that our group learned that the fewer joint parts with a greater surface area of contact, the stronger the bridge would be.  We did not consider Ant Bridge to be a failure, but the primary problem with it was that it was too small.  It was necessary to use a large amount of glue for this model.  Future modifications of our design will consist of a much larger bridge and less glue, so that we can really understand if this design can be successful at a large scale, under the weight requirements.