Balsa Bridge Building Contest

Both physics 11 and physics 12 classes all participate in the Balsa Bridge building contest. The Balsa Bridge Building Contest is performed to test the craftmanship of each student, with specific rules and regulations. These bridges are constructed out of balsa wood which, fortunately for the Notre Dame Regional students is only a couple blocks away from the school. The rules can be seen HERE. Check out photos of last years bridges HERE. This contest has been going on since 1980, hundreds of bridges have been tested and all are pushed to their limit until they break. Their main primary goal in this contest is to hold as much weight as they can with their constructed balsa bridge. Also, there are awards for the best looking bridge, best craftmanship, and most unusual looking bridge. With the use of balsa wood, a hand saw, and some glue the combined classes of Physics 11 and 12 found out why bridges are one of the best structures man has ever made.

This bridge below is the current record holder for the most weight held.

Vancouver is the city of many interesting bridges here is my favourite.

To view more Vancouver bridges check it out HERE.

To view many unusual and amazing bridges all over the world click HERE.

Here is the aftermath of our bridges, one by one they broke due to the heavy weight that we all tried to achieve. The weights, which consisted of metal weights and sand were supported by chains which held up a simple garbage bucket which was supported by a car that was placed onto each bridge. A fixed amount of weight was placed into the garbage bucket and we all waited patiently untill all the bridges gave in.

We have many sponsors for this contest one of which is APEG.

Check out this neat site explaining how bridges work! Check it out HERE.

Visual Basic

Nearing the end of our Visual Basic Program section, we ended up making a second version of our Calculator program.

• For this program we made a number of options to choose from such as,


• - Exponents


• - Mod


• - Multiplication


• - Division


• - Integer Division


• - Addition


• - Subtraction

This is our second version of our calculator program, for this program we made more buttons compared to our first version. We’ve added the exponential command (optExponentiation), Integer division command (optIntegerDivision), and the Mod command (optModulus). Under each option of our calculator we use the command (dblanswer = dblFirstNumber X dblSecondNumber) with X being the Multiplication, Addition, Subtraction, etc.

We had to clear the values for the options by making each value = False.
optExponentiation.Value = False
optMultiplication.Value = False
optDivision.Value = False
optIntegerDivision.Value = False
optModulusDivision.Value = False
optAddition.Value = False
optSubtraction.Value = False

It’s accustomed to customary place Option Explicit at the beginning, and we also added a Done command button to finish our calculator program.

Now, we will move onto a more complex program; C++

Computer Disassembly Project

Computer Disassembly Project

The class of Thursday, December 18th, and December 20th, of 2007 we experimented with a Compaq DeskPro spare computer. We were allowed to take apart and reassemble the computer with the tools given to us. Mr. Vogel assigned groups of two, and gave out one Compaq DeskPro computer to each group along with a tool kit to take apart the computer. We had to make sure that each screw and bolt was accounted for in the final stages of completing the assembly part of the computer once again. We had to take pictures along with our group name for our blogs and summaries. This project was intended to test our knowledge of the computer parts and where everything is specifically placed within the computer given to us. It was tough for my group because we did not pay much attention to where each small screw went. So in the end we ended up with some spare screws, but our computer was still intact.

List of parts that were asked to be removed are as follows:
Disconnect obvious power and data connectors
Network Card
Sound Card
Riser Board
Hard Drive
CD-ROM
Floppy Drive
Speaker
RAM: number of “Sticks”
Motherboard
Front Panel
CPU Cooling Fins
CPU
Power Supply

Our group, K-Squared Ramblings, was able to disassemble and reassemble our computer within the 2 class periods. But unfortunately, our CPU Cooling Fan did not turn on. But some lights were visible and working during our test process. During this project we learned that precise planning and thought comes into play when creating a computer and a simple mistake like plugging in the wrong wires to the wrong component could be a key variable in making the computer work, or could even start a malfunction of some sort, and may cause a fire.