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Re: Bridge Building 2016
Posted: January 8th, 2016, 4:59 am
by JonB
DumbTro wrote:JonB wrote:DumbTro wrote:Guys what's the best way to hair dry your structure while maintaining most strength and decreasing most weight for the bridge?
This has been discussed in the past and I am pretty sure that almost everyone agrees that using a hair dryer is just not practical in reference to removing moisture from the wood (also, you don't want to remove ALL the moisture). There is really no way to use a hair dryer right before you test your bridge. If you use a hair dryer hours before the competition then it will just reabsorb moisture from the air around it. We have used silica gel in the containers that we transport our structures in but that is just to make sure that there is not an EXCESS of moisture around it (we are in Florida).
What I'm trying to say I want to use a hairdryer because maybe its not the best method but it still removes weight from the structure from and increases my efficiency. I got an efficiency of 1724 with my bridge at 8.7 and I held max load. I removed 0.1 gram with hair drying, but I want to know a way that is better and makes me loss more weight. By the way I'm division C.
If you remove ALL of the moisture it can become very brittle. I would say there is a balance- you want SOME moisture in the wood. The only way that is "better" is to optimize the actual wood being used (use lighter wood in areas that can take it) and optimize the design.
Re: Bridge Building 2016
Posted: January 8th, 2016, 6:07 am
by nxtscholar
If you really want more information, just go back to 2014 under the boomilever topic. As JonB stated, it was adequately addressed back then. Type in "dry" to see all the relevant posts about using a hair dryer to dehydrate your structure.
http://www.scioly.org/phpBB3/search.php ... sf=msgonly
Re: Bridge Building 2016
Posted: January 11th, 2016, 11:50 am
by noobforce
some sketchy setup for NJIT Regional in NJ... There wasn't even 15KG and we ran out of sand at 12KG...
Re: Bridge Building 2016
Posted: January 11th, 2016, 1:08 pm
by bernard
noobforce wrote:
some sketchy setup for NJIT Regional in NJ... There wasn't even 15KG and we ran out of sand at 12KG...
Calling nxtscholar to run all Bridge Building events in NJ...
Re: Bridge Building 2016
Posted: January 11th, 2016, 1:25 pm
by JonB
noobforce wrote:
some sketchy setup for NJIT Regional in NJ... There wasn't even 15KG and we ran out of sand at 12KG...
Wow. Just, wow.
Re: Bridge Building 2016
Posted: January 11th, 2016, 1:52 pm
by nxtscholar
@bernard: lolol thanks
This actually made my day
Re: Bridge Building 2016
Posted: January 11th, 2016, 3:31 pm
by retired1
I see 1 pair of safety glasses, but nobody wearing them. Are the pictures pre/during/post competition?
Re: Bridge Building 2016
Posted: January 11th, 2016, 4:54 pm
by noobforce
That was during the competition... It was a mess. The proctors broke the first scale so we were delayed 30 minutes to get a new one. When they massed the sand they didn't even include the mass of the chain and the scale itself (it was attached to the chain). Our efficiency could have been much much higher but there wasn't 15KG of sand to use. I actually wasn't expecting to do as well as I did but am very happy with my result.
Re: Bridge Building 2016
Posted: January 12th, 2016, 4:25 am
by JonB
noobforce wrote:That was during the competition... It was a mess. The proctors broke the first scale so we were delayed 30 minutes to get a new one. When they massed the sand they didn't even include the mass of the chain and the scale itself (it was attached to the chain). Our efficiency could have been much much higher but there wasn't 15KG of sand to use. I actually wasn't expecting to do as well as I did but am very happy with my result.
How did you score? What were the top scores you saw?
Re: Bridge Building 2016
Posted: January 12th, 2016, 6:21 am
by nxtscholar
I mean...they only had 12 kg of sand.
Scores there would be meaningless because anyone can speculate that it would have been higher (but subjective to how much).
Unless the bridges were low mass...then we'd see some potentially impressive scores regardless.