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We design a 1 to 10 scale DoT - Department of Transportation - bridge
It's much like a bridge that you will see driving over any highway
Our goal is to build the lightest, quickest and cheapest bridge.
Previous years we've been around fourth or fifth areas out of twelve.
We need to be second or third to go to the national competition.
I think we have a pretty good chance of doing that.
Our team is really good because we teach you a lot about different aspects of civil engineering.
You get involved with professors. You get involved with professionals.
And we also teach you design
how to use programs that we use quite often in civil engineering like AutoCAD.
And Res3D which is another program that's different from autoCAD that helps us design the bridge
And also, you get to learn skills about shop stuff.
Starting this semester, we've really put an incredible amount of time to get the thing done
Probably in the neighborhood of 10-20 hours a week
Since weight and time construction are a big part of our competition
there's a lot of thought put into the bridge how to reduce the weight
And to build and assemble the bridge quick but you still have to build the whole the way
whereas a person that might just go to a technical school
They will probably just say - um that will work.
we can run calculations and actually predict how our bridge will perform.
They like the team because some of the hardest courses in civil engineering are actually statics and structural analysis courses
which are based in theory.
And it's very hard to see the application.
So you do a lot of work on paper
Then you go - "I don't really understand what this amounts to...
Why does it have to be this tall, or this big?
And when you come to steel bridge
You kind of see that as we designed it and you can see your design.
And that's the biggest thing in civil engineering -
All the works. You don't know what's really happening. You just hope it comes out great.
After you do all these calculations, your client tells you what's happening.
Or like, the professor tells you your homework problem.
When it's finished, your homework is finished, it's just a piece of paper
When the steel bridge is finished, it's something that you can stand on.
It's something you can walk around.
You take pictures of it. You know, something your parents can be proud of.
And it's just a lot of fun because you finally see that the paper actually makes something.