Thoughts for the Future

Having taken the Linear test, I feel great. I thought it was straight forward, although I messed up on a few parts but mistakes are kind of natural to me by now. It's been a while since I have even gotten a perfect score on my tests. Of course seeing the test makes me happy since it wasn't anything horrible like my other classes where the test average for the class is failing. There will be places to improve and one of those places is reading the questions thoroughly. I read one of the questions as what is the general formula for the governing equations instead of what is the general formula for a mathematical model. Maybe I'll take my time next time instead of rushing it seeing that I had at least 15min left to take the test. The individual project however, seems like it could end up being very complicated. Although it depends on each person's system and model and how they approach it. Mine being a normal truss and comparing it to bridges seems like it could be difficult but rather very easy. Since I can create my own loading for the bridge such as a car's weight. Then if I find how much a average car weighs per unit length and multiply that by the bridge's length then I can find a uniform distribution across the bridge. That would be for when the bridge has traffic and average max loading would occur across the bridge. Then for even more weight I could think of a truck or something that weighs even more than a average car and test that. I think testing the loading at certain points might help also. I'm taking away that the bridge could suffer from climate and just looking at the forces, also taking away fatigue on the bridge. Although fatigue is very important when picking the material and it's dimensions I think if I'm only focusing on the forces and how much force is needed to keep the bridge from deforming the best option is to simplify my system.