Nobuki Fukui from Japan - 2013 admission
In this summer, interested students in my class signed up for a bridge model contest. I was a member of that contest. We were supposed to make a wooden bridge model. Of course, we couldn’t use any nails. What we could use were timbers and strings sent by Japan Society of Civil Engineers. Actually, such event as this contest is the first challenge for International course students. In the first meeting, we decided the name of the bridge model we would make. We named it “MEJICK”. This name stands for Malaysia, Egypt, Japan, Indonesia, China and Kenya. These alphabets are initials of members’ nationalities. We had very hard time for making a bridge model because we hadn’t taken “Structural Mechanics”, which we will take in this fall semester. We didn’t have any specific knowledge about Structural Mechanics such as bridge, dam and so on. Fortunately, we were allowed to use the laboratory in Katsura Campus. We framed trial items and took load test as we groped in the dark. After some experiments, we found several important things. For example, connection parts started to crack when we put around 12 kg. This means the weakest point was connection and we should reinforce. After all, we made models three times. Our final design was a truss bridge. We didn’t select complicated designs because nobody in our team had experiences of making bridge models. Moreover, we could find 6 alphabets, M, E, J, I, C, and K when we saw it from above. To our regret, we failed to get the prize in the contest but we cultivated a better understanding about civil engineering. I hope we make much better bridge model next year !!
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