Breaking Bridges at IHM

5th - 8th grade student made "Physics Challenge Club" bridges breaking. Here's the bridge breaker contraption:
http://hallbuzz.com/images/2010/oct/bridge_breaker_1024.jpg
On the right is a 75 cent garage sale screw jack. The jack allows a load to be added quickly, evenly and smoothly producing relatively maximum/best-case results. The verticals on the left are guides to help ensure that the load travels straight down. The big bolt in the middle-top is a fulcrum for the top bar; you see the left side in the video. I wanted it to be springy so that when the stronger bridges gave out the load would slam down at a rate much higher than normal 1 G acceleration from a gravity mass, producing fun, violent bridge destruction (which it did). The $9 scale goes up to 300#. If we had bridges hit 300# my plan was to put one side of the bridge-spanner base block on the center of the scale and the other on block. We would then multiply the scale reading by two, so a 200# reading would really be 400#. The hinged three part walnut thing that presses on the bridges simulates two scale cars and articulates enough that the bridge upper surface must have some integrity. We ran the machine 16 times in 40 minutes, including messing around with a few bridges that wouldn't fit/stand quite right.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Student
• made
• Physics
• Challenge
• Club
• bridges
• breaking

[Kichea77]

our school is actually really fun! i go to it!!!!

[FiltyIncognito]

Awesome, that looks like tons of fun! Makes me wish my school had more fun stuff like that.