Students' research papers had to include
a range of information on bridge building,
including scale drawings, such as this one.
The Research Article
In the Bridge Project students worked individually to write a research-based
article and then worked in teams to construct a bridge model. For the article,
students selected and researched a bridge, gathering information on its design
and construction. The article was to include photographs or scaled drawings,
associated dates, an explanation of why the bridge was built, society's gains
from the bridge, interesting facts, and a description of what engineers learned
from the process of design and construction. Students gathered information through
classroom study of physics principles and mathematical formulas, and used outside
resources such as contractors and engineers. Students were responsible for determining
how the concepts and information they gathered applied to the bridge they were
researching.
