Weekly wrap up 3/18/16--meeting an bridge engineer

MarioFan has been learning all about movable bridges this week.  Draw bridges, swivel bridges and bascule bridges.  We have been finding some very interesting movable bridges on you tube to watch.  Then we set out to create a few movable bridges of our own:)

MarioFan got out his K'nex kit and built a draw bridge

IN our travels we have seen many of these types of bridges

A successful build:)

Next we saw a simple way to contract a swivel bridge in our bridge book and decided to give it a try 

We use a box and an old plastic tub to construct.

And of course after assembling we had to test our bridge and play for a few minutes. 

This week we met a Bridge engineer at a local historical bridge and MarioFan got to see and ask lots of questions. This bridge was build in the late 1800's and moved to this site and it stands between two other bridges that we also got to look up close to.

A fellow homeschooling friend of MarioFan came with us and learned about Bridges too. 

MarioFan was thrilled to see in the water a bridge caisson that we learned about a few weeks ago

Jeff Boyster was wonderful with the children and answer lots of questions and pointed out lots of various components of bridges. 

 Not far from these bridges we were told there was a old Covered bridge that we could go see.

There was an great information board there that gave a lot of details about covered bridges.  I didn't realized there are 4 covered bridges still in the state of MO.  

While there we saw a wedding in progress:) 

Once the wedding party left we were able to get up close to explore and examine the bridge.

this bridge is a Howe Truss Cover bridge which was the most common built

oops hiding from the wedding photographer:)

and of course you must examine the stream

and throw a couple of stones:)

It was beautiful and we learned quite a bit.  I had no idea there was so much history to covered bridges.

Near these bridges was a famous restaurant called the Blue Owl, it has been on the travel channel, food network and listed as Oprah's 100 best:)  We had lunch and thought all the praise on this establishment was well earned:)

Next up Mario Fan will be learning about Bridge erosion and that will conclude our study on Bridges.  We will be preparing for the Project fair coming up in less than a month and putting together everything we have done to learn about the bridge engineering.