Bridge Over Troubled Water

Hubby has been studying for his Professional Engineer's License. Although he's been an engineer for forever, he's consulting now, which means different rules for some of the things he wants to take on. He took his first test a few weeks ago and will take the next one in six months.

Most of what he studies is review, but he ran into a few things that he didn't encounter in college. One was statically determinate trusses, which involves the method of joints and the method of sections. He wanted some hands-on, so he found a book entitled "Designing and Building File-Folder Bridges." And that means building a bridge from the stuff of which file folders are made.



That's the plan and the pieces of manila envelope cut out to fit. The whole thing turned out to look like this.



It weighed two ounces. He then proceeded to place it between two chairs and put eleven pounds of books on it.



Here he is putting the smallest of the books on the top of the bridge. It held up. I'm impressed.