Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Real Bridges – California’s New Bay Bridge

This video from Science Friday isn’t directly about trusses (but notice the use of trusses in the construction), but it’s interesting to see the kinds of things that engineers incorporate to make bridges safe.

As the video indicates, the previous bridge in this location failed during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

Note the time scale for big projects of this sort – it’s 23 years since the failure and the replacement is just about to open.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Blog Addresses for Students in Prof. Mitchell’s Bridge Sections

Below are the blog addresses of the students in these sections, sorted by last name. This list was generated from the A1 assignment submission so there are some blog addresses missing, either because no blog URL was submitted, or the editing URL rather than the published URL was submitted.

“Not Available” means that the URL submitted was the editing URL – only the owner can see that
A blank URL means no URL was submitted.

You can see the blog by clicking the URL. To find the particular post of interest you will need to:

Use the “labels” that (we hope) each student applied
Scroll through the blog.

Name URL of Blog

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Posting Mechanism

Question:

Last week for the teamwork post my group posted them as comments on our "Weekly post" page. For the A1 assignment we have to make a post and title it and when ever we try to make a post it always goes to our home page. How should we go about posting it?

Response:

Without looking at your blog I cannot be certain about this answer, but it sounds to me as though you're probably doing the correct thing. The idea behind a blog is that the latest post is always at the top of the list, with previous posts following on the page. To see previous posts you can:

Scroll down the main page - usually a limited number of posts will be scrollable
Search the blog for key words
Use the "labels" (sometimes called "tags") to click and see the posts with those labels
Use the chronology to show those posts happening at a given time.

Note that you don't want to "comment" on a previous post, you want to create a new post each time. You add comments only when you want the comment to stick with the post as a comment.

To get the URL of your specific post:

Display the post on your page - that's what happens usually when you "publish" your post or search for it
Click on the title of the post

That displays that post only, with the URL in the "Location Bar"

Copy the URL from the location bar

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Comp-1 = A1 Survey – Please complete this survey of your design results

Updated 4/17/2012 4:05PM to make it clear this is the Comp-1 assignment.

In the week-3 lab we’ll be reviewing the results of your A1 designs and then each team will develop an improved design in class.
To allow us to compare the designs and perhaps draw some inferences we’re asking you to complete a Google Docs survey that documents some aspects of bridge that you’ve designed, as well as the URL of your A1 blog post.
You’ll receive a very similar email asking you to do the same thing. This post is just a readily accessible place to go to the survey.

Link to Survey - This is the Comp-1 survey

You’ll be able to see the results in spreadsheet form here.

Bring your Bridge Design with you

As the survey notes, you’ll want to modify your bridge design in class so please bring your file with you:

On a flash drive
On a web site such as Google Docs or DropBox
Email it to yourself

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Introducing myself - Jay Bhatt - your engineering librarian

My name is Jay Bhatt and I am your engineering librarian.

Increased cognizance of online handbooks, encyclopedias, and various online databases such as ASCE Digital Library, and Engineering Village, is extremely important for you in order to successfully complete your design projects. To assist you with this, I have created Engineering Reference Assistance page which can be accessed by going to:

http://www.library.drexel.edu/engineering

You can also set up an appointment with me for more in depth research consultations. Here is how you can do so:

http://www.library.drexel.edu/blogs/englibrary/reference-assistance-for-engineering/
and click on 'Book a Reference Consultation' to set up a meeting time

You can also email me at bhattjj@drexel.edu or call me at 215 895-1873 and set up a meeting with me. My office is in room 132 in the Library.

I have also created a web page for Bridge Design Resources that I think you will find it very useful during the course of this term for your design projects.

This page can be accessed from: http://www.library.drexel.edu/blogs/englibrary/2012/04/05/bridge-design-resources/

Looking forward to meeting with you all.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Field Inspection - Week-3 Discussion Alternate Topic

Those who wish to substitute the following for the discussion portion of the week-3 blog entry may do so. Understand that you still include the notebook entries on what you did and what you're going to do.

Field Inspection

Safely visit a truss bridge, take photos, make observations on its function and its status. By status we mean.

Its overall condition
Whether the traffic loads on it appear too great, too little, or about right
Any particular problems you observe, particularly with respect to the truss portion of the bridge

Include the photos in your blog entry as well as your observations.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

How to Capture and Post Images

This post was created to show you how to capture and post images to your blog. I used a PC (Windows-7) so some of the information is PC-specific.

Tools

Windows-7 has a built-in screen capture tool - "Snipping Tool"

On a home machine just searching for snipping
On a "locked down" Drexel machine in which searching isn't available you may be able to go to windows help (F1 when on the desktop) and search for "snipping". In the help that comes up there will be links to the snipping tool.

You can also use PrintScreen - which has good instructions on how to use it.
There are many good, free screen capture utilities. One that I use is PicPick

How to Add an Image - How I created the image above

I'll assume you have access to Snipping on a PC - other programs will be similar

Get the image you want to capture on your screen - e.g. the bridge design
Start the program Snipping

If it's already started create a new snip from its menu

The screen will go white
Draw around the area you want to capture
That will capture it to the program Snipping

Save the image to a file somewhere where you can get it again

I used the default "png" format to create the image above

Open Blogger and put the cursor where you want the image to appear.
Click on the link of the image in Blogger for to upload it to your blog - see below

Accept it within blogger

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

WPBD Registering to Local Contest

Registering for the West Point Bridge Designer Contest

Our contest ID is DUPA - Please register as individuals

Here are the instructions from the authors of WPBD on how to set up your copy so you're scores will be entered in our "Local Contest".

(1) Instruct all of your students to register for the West Point Bridge Design Contest at http://bridgecontest.usma.edu/login.htm. If any of your students are not “eligible contestants,” as defined by the WPBDC rules, that’s OK. They can still register in the “Open Competition.” (Anyone in the world can enter the Open Competition, though there are no prizes associated with this category.)

(2) On the final page of the web registration system (the same page on which teams are asked to provide their e-mail address and password), your students will see a text box labeled, “If you are participating in a local contest organized by your school, a local engineering association, or other organization, enter your Local Contest Code here." Students should enter the Local Contest Code in this text box.

(3) The website will check that the code is a valid one and will post a confirmation on the Team Home Page.

(4) If a contestant has already registered and did not enter the Local Contest Code at the time of registration, he or she can add it at any time by logging into the Team Home Page.

(5) Once your project or contest is underway, you can view your own Local Contest Scoreboard on the following web page:

http://bridgecontest.usma.edu/standings/local/DUPA.htm