Math We Learned As we all know, math is used every single day in any different ways. When we built our version of the San Luis Rey rope bridge, we realized that it wouldn’t be as easy as we had originally thought. We needed a plan on how many sticks and how much string we’d need to get this all right. So we came up with a little formula for each one.
First, we needed to figure out how much string we would need. After screwing in the screws, we saw that it formed two triangles at each end, with a long rectangle in the middle. We saw it easy to measure the length of the rectangles, but a little harder to measure the length of the triangles. So we decided to use Pythagorean Theorem ( a + b = c ) to see how long the edges would be. We measured out the bottom of the triangle and divided by 2, to get a, then we figured out the height to get b. We then squared both numbers to get the sum, c (which turned out to be the lengths of the triangles). This equation helped us figure out the amount of string we would need to wrap around the edges and build the bridge.
Secondly, we needed to figure out how many Popsicle sticks we would need I order to fill the base of the bridge. For this, we decided to make our own equation, Length of string, divided by the Width of the Popsicle sticks (L/W). This showed how many possible sticks could fit on the bottom, without going under or over. For instance, if the bridge was about 150 centimeters, and the width of the Popsicle sticks were 2