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Newspaper Bridge Project

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The Newspaper bridge project is a project where students are given the challenge to make a bridge using newspaper, straws, and tape. Each material has a price. 1 sheet of paper $10, 1 straw $1, and 10 cm of tape $2. Students were given the challenge to make a bridge only using $25 of materials. In this essay, I will be explaining the process which my group constructed our bridge for this project. And answer the question; How to construct a newspaper bridge that will hold the most weight and is cost efficient with the given materials?
My group's bridge held a lot more weight than I thought. Our group tried different ideas for our prototype. At first, we wanted to only use straws for our bridge. We first tried to weave straws together. …show more content…

They were using all of the money but had a low-cost effectiveness ratio. Since their bridge was very heavy and was mostly made out of only newspaper their bridge was probably very weak because it had no reinforcements. My group used straws to reinforce our rods the same way that steel bars are used in concrete to reinforce it. Without the reinforcement, the beams would crack because of the load causing the beam to be in tension. Their bridges were made with only paper with tape holding it together. As compared to my group's bridge we tried our best to reinforce our bridge with straws. With no reinforcements, their bridge collapsed under the weight put on it. Other groups tried to make a bridge with the least amount of money hold the most weight. In the future, I would try to make a bridge this way. An example of this would be the group of Tucker, Hilary, and Jack in G band. They were runner-up to us in the strength efficiency ratio with 1167 g held/1g of mass, but their bridge only cost $14 and their cost-effectiveness ratio was 1000g/$1. The amount of paper they used caused their bridge to be a little bit heavier than ours. I find it surprising how their bridge held so much since it was not like any of the other bridge. I think making a bridge this way would be more of a challenge in the

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