Day 5 - Cardboard Lane

Cardboard Lane

Today involved much teamwork and quick thinking. Our first task was to create bridge designs made from paper. I found this task quite challenging because it was hard to try not to focus on the details of the bridge, for example, cut-out designs, what materials that will be used and how the user would experience the environment.

Today involved much teamwork and quick thinking. Our first task was to create bridge designs made from paper. I found this task quite challenging because it was hard to try not to focus on the details of the bridge, for example, cut-out designs, and what materials that will be used. These designs were then used to help the main bridge that we were building in our groups. 

Our group’s main design was a take on a drawbridge, however our bridge did not ascend nor descend, it stayed mobile and had a jump in the middle, which was quite a risk for the car in the final test. 

Our structure began from a prism shaped piece of cardboard that extended to 2.3m and was placed from either side of the table. This base, which was formed of many prisms was held together with bamboo sticks at every point where the cardboard overlapped. At this point we faced an issue because the prisms were not held very tightly together, we overcame this problem by using tape to act as a plug to prevent the bamboo sticks moving in the pierced holes. Unfortunately, this only worked for a short amount of time, yet again we faced the problem and used doubled up rubber bands to act as a stronger plug so the bamboo sticks did not move out of place.

 A further problem that arose was the shape of the 'semi-tunnel', the prism shape did not accommodate for the width of the car, therefore we had to loosen the prism shape and made the semi-tunnel into sort of an open extended box.

We were now getting ahead with the base of the bridge, now we started to assemble the bamboo sticks that held the bridge upright at two points in the ‘river’, at this point we were running out of time, so we joined the bamboo sticks in an upside down tee pee tent form and taped this to the carpet. It just about was stable.

At the final test, the car made it over the bridge with a few mishaps, but it did not collapse. Success!

Today's activities were very enjoyable because I was able to share my ideas and listen and observe other people's ideas as well. However, I would have preferred to spend more time on planning with paper bridges, so I could have consolidated my ideas better. Although, this also means I do need to manage my time better with the activities.