Our first bridge held a weight of 3.45 kilograms When the bridge broke the leg supporting the bridge broke because the applied force was stronger than the normal force the legs of the bridge could no longer withstand the weight. What we did to hopefully help keep our bridge from breaking again and be able to hold more weight is we made the base of the bridge wider, we made the legs that support the bridge shorter and added more zig-zags to add more reinforcement to the bridge.
The first thing we wanted to do was change how wide the base of the bridge was. The bridge base originally had a width of 4 centimeters and we decided to change it so that it was 5 centimeters wide to help it stand better and hold more weight because the first bridge we built kept falling over. We changed this because the bridge kept falling over and the base was bending out due to the sand being emptied into the bucket The base was then sliding up against the table as more weight was added to the bridge. We believed this was causing a friction force as the base began to get pushed out as the middle of the bridge bent inward trying to withstand the sand being emptied into the bucket. The base eventually couldnt withstand the weight anymore causing the bridge to break. We ended up changing the width of the base for the second one hoping it
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What we did to change that is we changed how tall the legs on the bse were they were originally 8 centimeters tall and we changed it to 6 centimeters tall. The reason why we changed this is because of Newton’s First Law. An object at rest will stay at rest unless acted on by an unbalanced force. Our bridge was causing an unbalanced force which is why the legs of the bridge broke in the first place. Our bridge wasn’t staying standing because it was to tall creating and unbalanced force which is why the bridge ended up breaking in that