I actually liked Mr. Breast-weight's class best of the three because
we made stuff. Specifically stick bridges and a metal box for putting
stuff in. The stick bridge was made of some short pre-cut square
sticks that we were supposed to glue onto a template and then in the
next class period after they were dry we would put them on a press
and the teacher would smash them and see how much they could hold
before they broke. It was awesome. I was really intent on building
the best bridge in the class and obsessed over design and the build
to make sure I would win the non existent contest. He had taught us
that triangles would provide the best strength which would have been
true if there were variations in the load a span or joint strength
issues. I pointed out to him that in a strait oppositional span-less
compressive load that a perfectly vertical column would be stronger.
He disagreed with me even when I offered to diagram it on the board
for him. The class couldn't have cared less they just wanted to glue
their sticks to a template. I was frustrated that he didn't want to
know the right answer. It still frustrates me when people do not want
to know the right answer. I am constantly amazed that people just are
not curious and don't care about vital issues like the best shape for
a stick bridge and the theory behind it. I decided to prove him wrong
so he would have to listen and then be sorry and change his ways. I
glued four sticks in a square column and then glued four sticks for a
base and four for a top and knew that my 12 stick solution was going
to dominate the 24 stick triangle girder solutions in the non
existent competition when they were all dry the next day. We were
going alphabetically so I was about middle of the pack and I was
getting nervous because some of the weak looking template replication
bridges were holding 4-500 pounds before they would break. It came to
my turn and I brought mine up and it looked insubstantial compared to
every other bridge because it was more compact. Mr. Breast-weight
popped it in and said something about how we were going to see if I
was smarter then the people who design bridges. I would have been mad
about that because the people who design bridges would have built
something very similar to my idea because we were not bridging
anything but I was to nervous about possibly failing to even get my
feel-bads hurt. He put it in and loved the plate down and started
cranking the jack as I watched the force gauge. 500 lbs , easy. 1000
lbs , c'mon just getting warm. At 1500 I think the teacher was
starting to get nervous about the blow back that would take out an
eye when this thing popped. 2000 lbs and the gauge ran out of numbers
he asked me if we should keep trying until it broke or if I wanted to
save my design. I was all for breaking it so see how much smarter
then people who build bridges were. Well, at least smarter then what
my teacher thought people who build bridges thought. He cranked the
jack once more and we were off the scale. Once more and it was pegged
once more and nothing changed. Once more and the 4000 lb jack stopped
working because it was at its limit. I didn't try not to gloat when
he let off the pressure and handed me back my slightly crumpled but
basically no worse for the wear ersatz bridge. I wanted to brag but
the teacher just said I cheated by not building it in a bridge shape
like the template and none of the kids in class gave the slightest of
craps that I won the imaginary competition that no one was having
except for me. I started building another of the same design but in a
line like the bridge template only more sturdy and set in by to dry
to prove once and for all that I was right about the design. The
problem was that when mine was dry the next class period Mr.
Breast-weight wouldn't get the press set up again to let me have my
own private go. I would have won the not-contest again anyway.
