Suspension Bridge Concept

Built something nice? Let the other Geomag fans see what you've done.

Suspension Bridge Concept

Postby jgnorman » Wed Dec 16, 2009 11:58 am

I built this over a break between classes a while back and forgot about it. It is a concept I've had for a while, and this was my first attempt at making a suspension structure using geomag. You might notice the tower was tall enough for one more suspension piece. I did successfully attach it, but the weight was too much and it fell before I could take a picture. If I owned more geomag I could potentially make multiple support towers that would result in a nice long suspension bridge. Alas, my finances leave me at this amount for now. (Oh, and I apologize to the "purists", it does contain small magnetic spheres in between each suspension cable piece to create a fluid cable without the weight of actual geomag spheres. and it allowed me to modify length of cable on a minute level without having to completely rebuild to get more precise dimensions.)

Image

Here's a couple other views so you can see closer.

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I am super busy with school so I haven't had any more time to experiment with this yet, but I would love to see someone else expand on my idea! If you do, please post it in this link for us all to see!
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Re: Suspension Bridge Concept

Postby Peter Jepsen » Wed Dec 16, 2009 6:01 pm

Very nice! Compliments.
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Re: Suspension Bridge Concept

Postby cappells » Wed Dec 16, 2009 6:55 pm

Yeah, yeah...very nice. But is it earthquake proof? :D
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Re: Suspension Bridge Concept

Postby jgnorman » Wed Dec 16, 2009 11:02 pm

Well thank you. It looked amazingly more impressive with that one last level added on. I wish you all could have seen it. It was definitely one of my more complicated assembly problems since I added on one length of bridge and one cable at a time. A second set of hands would make a world of difference, or maybe just some books under it...

I definitely see some flaws I wanna fix. If anyone sees anything that could be done better could you post your suggestions here please! I am pretty sure if I had used a square tower structure with panels that I then could have run 2 parallel cables down to the bridge meaning more weight could be held, but I am not sure whether the extra weight of that cable would counteract that or not. Plus I just don't have the magnets necessary to make anything of size that way.
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Re: Suspension Bridge Concept

Postby jgnorman » Wed Dec 16, 2009 11:08 pm

Actually, my ideal bridge would be completely built using square panels and would have a 2 panel wide road (completely flat, no triangular support structure like I had in this) accompanied by 2 towers being 2x2 with square panels. or maybe even 2x4 with a gap where cars would drive. If anyone with a larger collection would be willing to try that I would be honored. Maybe I should make a challenge to see who can come up with the most creative structure using suspension as a key element of holding weight...
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Re: Suspension Bridge Concept

Postby jag2102 » Tue Dec 22, 2009 10:21 pm

Great work with the bridge...will have a go doing one myself (if i get the time).
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Re: Suspension Bridge Concept

Postby karlhorton » Sun Dec 27, 2009 9:04 pm

Really nice idea with the small magnetic spheres: I'm a big fan of augmenting Geomag myself.
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Re: Suspension Bridge Concept

Postby jgnorman » Mon Dec 28, 2009 8:17 am

Well thank you. A while back I got one of those "hyper cubes" which I think was just 216 mini spheres so you could make a cube. They looked sort of fun, but I exhausted most possibilities pretty quickly considering I had geomag as an alternative waiting for me to get back to. So they ended up coming in handy for this since they actually had poles and were quite strong themselves.
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