Digital Paint Discussion Board
Digital Paint Community => Other Stuff => Topic started by: Fullmetal_Steeb on May 22, 2008, 03:57:40 PM
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We have to make a bridge out of toothpicks for an engineering class I'm taking. Does anyone know of a good site to visit to help, or can give me tips? :D
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http://www.toothpickdesign.com/
http://www.pisymphony.com/toothpick/toothpick1.htm
http://www.uen.org/utahlink/activities/view_activity.cgi?activity_id=7498
Google is your friend (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4EGLC_en___US228&q=toothpick%2bbridge)
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Toothpicks and what? Glue? String?
What's the size and weight limit?
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Knack - too lazy to use google. this is my homepage, so i figured "hey theres alot of smart people on dp forums..." that was my first mistake...
tinman - toothpicks and wood glue. up to 1000 toothpicks, 12" x 3" minimum (length x width, no height requirement, no weight limit other than what is pretty much enforced by the number of toothpicks...)
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we had to do the same thing with popsicle sticks and glue. we only had 100 popsicle sticks. we have a cool program at our schhol called modelsmart. helps a lot
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I made a 5 story pop. stick house and set it on fiRE. Between the gasoline and the glue, the bonfire was sweet. Took me 4 years to build and over 5000 sticks.
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stick house and set it on first.
Call me cliche, but I think a house should be on home...
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I've had to build a bridge out a spaghetti and hot glue. Our bridge tied with how much it held, but was lighter than the other, so we won :)
We made sure not to use single pieces, but we glued everything in groups of 4 for all our supports. Also, if theres no weight limit or limit for glue, cake all the joints with a lot of extra glue....
I'll see if I have a picture, but it was from 5 years ago, lol
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Hehe, sorry y00tz. I meant to say fire.
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triangles are the strongest shape... unless u make a perfect sphere out of toothpicks
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Or an arc, which is why most bridges have them.
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I drew the blueprint as a truss bridge with all off the trusses being equilateral triangles. It's pretty good looking.
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I drew the blueprint as a truss bridge with all off the trusses being equilateral triangles. It's pretty good looking.
Truss bridges are the strong but an arc bridge is the strongest of all but is a pain in the butt to make.
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Fullmetal: Is this for a class competition, or just an assignment?
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A little bit of both. There's bonus points for the top few strongest in the class.
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I drew the blueprint as a truss bridge with all off the trusses being equilateral triangles. It's pretty good looking.
pics?
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Take a read here -> http://www.pisymphony.com/toothpick/toothpick1.htm
Great pointers.
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Here's a pic of most of the blueprint. The end is cut off, but it's got all the measurements in the top corner. I suck at drawing, that's why it doesn't look very good.
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looks like it will be strong. do you have enough tooth picks to put a centre beam in all of the triangles instead of just every second one in the bottom row
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I'm in the process of building it right now, and it does look like I'll have enough to do that. I'll post pics as I build.
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I made a 5 story pop. stick house and set it on fiRE. Between the gasoline and the glue, the bonfire was sweet. Took me 4 years to build and over 5000 sticks.
to clarify, how big is 1 story. You say 5 storys and im thinking over 50 feet tall
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Haha, my bad. One popstick high was a story. It was a good 3.5 foot tall and with a little gasoline, a 30 foot tall flame.
I look forward to the pictures of your bridge. I made a arc bridge in my Engineering design class and my bridge held the second most amount of weight.
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did you take a video of the bonfire? :P (^_^)
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Of course not, that would mean it had to happen.
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i would have stuck firecrackers or something exsplosive to the tower. :P
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Right.
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what's wrong with a "little" explosives? more boom more fun!
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Oh just that it seems the same people are always the ones who are like "I'd do this, and this and add a little TNT, and..." to try and act hardcore.
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You need to post pics as you build your bridge.
I for one would like to see it.
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You need to post pics as you build your bridge.
I for one would like to see it.
+1
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I'm attempting to get some on here... Can't find the camera. :P
Edit: Got it. Pic one is one of the sides of it, with the trusses. Picture two is one of the arches I'm going to put under the road to distribute the force to the outside corners, and picture three is the roadway itself. It had to be at least three inches wide, and since the toothpicks were only a little over 2 inches, i had to put one toothpick, then another a little bit up the first one, then another back to where the first was... etc. You can see what I'm talking about probably.
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I only see one mistake, and it could be a biggie.
Where you have the ends of your struts ( lack of a better term) glued, they should not be overlapping, but should be cut with an exacto knife/razor blade so that they are all on the same plane. As you have it right now, the glue is the only thing supporting the structure and the glue might fail due to the sheering forces applied.
If you don't understand what I mean, I'll try ti get a few pics up.
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I get what you mean, and I was planning on doing it today. Thanks for reminding me, though. I didn't actually glue anything yet, other than the road part.
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Ahhhh good deal, then nothing wasted.
Keep us posted.
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Progress has been very slow. I had to go do some stuff like go to the store earlier, and I haven't had much time to work on it since this morning, but I have the bottom row of triangles on each side done. That's about it for news...
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Try to build the type of arch bridge that doesn't require adhesives to hold itself together.
*searching for pic*
Anyone know what I'm talking about?
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Uh... I've already started on this and turned in my blue print for it. It's a little late to offer ideas now. Thnx. XD
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Update: I AM AN IDIOT. After I finished the bottom rows yesterday, I dropped one of the sides and stepped on it. >:( Here are some pics. I did about 20 minutes of work so far today.
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starting to look good. keep going
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I finished it on Sunday night, and of course the batteries in my camera were dead, and I had no time to charge them. I had to turn it in on Monday, and when tested it held 45 pounds of weights, plus the bar across the bridge and the bucket the weights were in, which is much better than I'd expected it to do, since the glue hadn't really set at the time. It did fail though, on the right side, through the middle of the horizontal supports. Apparently the glue REALLY wasn't ready in those parts. Anything else you would like to know?
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wow you didnt have to much time for that project
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How did you compare with the rest of the class?
As far as glue, white glue isn't the best for that application. Microbeads fro ma hobby store, or even gorilla snot would have been better.
But good job!
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How did you compare with the rest of the class?
As far as glue, white glue isn't the best for that application. Microbeads fro ma hobby store, or even gorilla snot would have been better.
But good job!
And hot glue makes a horrible mess, know from experience.
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With the rest of the class, most were around the 25-30 lbs. range. The most was 190. Waaaaay out there from everyone elses, the second best was 65.
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190lbs!? Did he reinforce it with steel or something?
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It was really small and compact.
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I had a person cheat in our bridge building contest. Had metal and nails in the building of his project and it held over 250lbs. Teacher wasn't to happy.
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nice
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It was really small and compact.
Did they not have a certain size it was supposed to span?
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By small and compact I meant height- and width-wise. It was just over 14 inches I believe, 12 was minimum. Sorry if I made that confusing.
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Could you draw us a picture and show us where and how they attached they weight?
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I'll save the time of drawing a picture and just draw one later if this explanation isn't good enough...
There was a metal bar they put across the "road" of the bridge width-wise, and to the ends of that bar they attached a bucket, suspended under the middle of the bridge. Then they put 5 pound weights in the bucket one at a time.
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yup,
draw a picture.
;D
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Yeah, that's usually how they do it.
When I was in high school they held a regional contest, based on efficiency. We ended winning by making a bridge just the length mandatory, but it was just a line of toothpicks, so it was virtually weightless... after it broke under the minimum weight (10 pounds), we won (and set a record) with an efficiency of nearly 1000, beating the old record of 50 or so.
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XD That's pretty cheap.
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Truth is, y00tz just didn't want to spend the cash on more toothpicks.
I kid, I kid.
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I don't mean cheap like that... You probably know what I mean anyway, nevermind. lol
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XD That's pretty cheap.
And cheap is in y00tzie's blood
Come give me some sugars big boy ;D
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Truth is, y00tz just didn't want to spend the cash on more toothpicks.
Or spend cash at all - I grabbed them from the checkout of IHOP - more then 15 in your pocket and you can easily become 'shish kebobed'
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Especially if you sit down wrong.........
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Sit down on the front of your thighs? Or if your carrying the toothpicks in your back pocket...
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"Is that a toothpick in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"
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That would have to be a pretty big toothpick to get confused between the two.
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if it was in your back pocket it would look like a tail.
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Why do my posts keep getting deleted?
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Why do my posts keep getting deleted?
lol i had one delted as well. but it was a bit harsh so..
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So... make this into a place where posts someone doesn't agree with get deleted? If I remember correctly, your post was a joke, right? Not a flame? Hmm...
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yep and i said "no offence" at the end. but it was directed to jitspoe so well hes the boss. i guess. anyway WAY outta topic. :D