How to Design a Balsa Wood Bridge
Designing your balsa wood bridge is the same as drawing what you expect your bridge to look like when you’re done. It is important to include the dimensions so you know what sizes to work with while building. It is also important that you design the bridge to be capable of supporting some weight. How much weight a bridge can support depends on the material used and the type of bridge built. So design a strong bridge type, such as a truss bridge.
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Instructions
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1
Draw the side view of your bridge. Use a pencil so that you can erase any mistakes. If you are building a truss bridge from balsa wood, your side view should look something like a trapezoid made up of three triangles.
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2
Add dimensions to the side view of your balsa wood bridge design. In designing a truss bridge, the longer (bottom) side of the trapezoid will be the length of the bridge while the sides of the trapezoid will be the height of your bridge. Make sure to specify how long and how tall you want your bridge to be.
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3
Draw the top view of your bridge on the same sheet of paper as you drew the side view. The top view will basically cover the length and width of the deck of the bridge. If you are designing a truss bridge, the view will be two rectangles made up of two squares with Xs across the center of the squares.
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4
Add dimensions to the top view in the same fashion as you added them for the side view. Remember that the longer sides of the rectangle will represent the length of the bridge while the shorter sides will represent the width.
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5
Draw a 3-D drawing of what you expect your balsa wood bridge to look like. If you are designing a truss bridge the drawing will look like a 3-D trapezoid.
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