Gluing Our Pasta Bridge

Day One

Today, we started gluing together our pasta bridge. The hardest part about making it is that we have to make sure the pasta is ripped into just the right length. At this point, we're almost done with one half of the bridge, we just need to add the supports. We might double up the pasta for extra support, but we're not sure yet.

Day Two

Today we finished the first half of our pasta bridge. For the supports, we wanted to make sure our bridge was stable, so we glued together four noodles at a time to ensure sturdiness. We also doubled up the diagonals of the top half of the bridge to equalize the strength of the bridge. Tomorrow, we start the second half.

Day Three

Today, we started our second half of our first bridge. First, we glued together the bottom of the bridge you see here. We made it four noodles thick because it is going to be part of the base of the bridge; it will be supporting the lasagna noodles along with the supports underneath it. We also finished the top curve, which proved to be difficult, because of course, pasta doesn't curve.

Day Four

Today we finished the second half of our bridge. We added the bottom supports, four noodles thick, and the rest of the diagonals. Tomorrow, we'll start the process of connecting the two halves, which entails gluing connector pieces to one half of the bridge, adding the other side, and then laying down the lasagna noodles in between the two halves.

Day Five

Today, we began the process of connecting our two halves. As you can see in the background, we glued the connector pieces to one half of the bridge, and now only need to glue the bridge half that Taylor is apparently licking to the one that has the connector pieces. Then we can add the lasagna noodles and test the bridge. Raw pasta must be pretty tasty. :)

Day Six

Today we connected the two halves of our bridge together, and added diagonal supports under the connector pieces to make it stronger. The hardest part was making sure the connector pieces and the diagonals were all the same length so that the bridge halves would actually connect.

Day Seven

Today, Taylor wasn't at school, so I was left alone to add the lasagna, which turned out to be more difficult than I imagined. Coach V only had janky broken pieces of lasagna left, which made it nearly impossible to make a smooth road. I didn't get to finish adding the lasagna, but hopefully tomorrow we'll be able to finish and test our bridge.

Day Eight

Today we finished adding the lasagna, and went up to test our bridge, only to find out that it weighed 53 grams too much. We had to take off all of the lasagna and only add one piece in the middle where we would put the testing weights in order to meet the bridge weight requirment. Tomorrow is the day for sure!!!

Day Nine

Today we finally tested our bridge, Sally. Both Taylor and I were really proud of her. She was 149 grams, and held a total of 2000g. Now we've moved on to our second bridge, Jimmy, which has to be lighter and hold more than Sally in order to get an A on the assignment.

Day Ten

Today we started on our second bridge, Jimmy. He's going to be similar in design to Sally, but he'll need to weigh less and hold more than Sally did. We finished almost one half of him, and are going to start the second half tomorrow. Here you see Taylor's foot and Hannah's hand next to Jimmy. :)

Day Eleven

Today, we started on the second half of Jimmy, which proved to be difficult because someone stole our glue gun even though it was out of glue. Thankfully, Matt let us borrow his glue gun, so we were still able to work on our bridge.

Day Twelve

Today, we kept working on our bridge. We started adding the diagonals that would form the top half of Jimmy. Hopefully, tomorrow we'll be able to finish and test Jimmy, so we'll have everything we'll need for the animoto video.