As I begin to get more comfortable with the 3D printer that I've been messing around with, courtesy of Airwolf 3D, the process becomes more exciting and challenging.  Kind of like that average kid in class that finally starts to find that groove, I'm nowhere near proficient, but I'm able to screw up a whole lot less.  This project was all about designing a bridge that could withstand the most weight while using less than 50 grams of the ABS filament that the printer is loaded with.

Before all of you engineers and physics champions criticize my design, it was a relatively fast build (about 90 minutes) and I just wanted to have something to test out by the end of the day.  On top of that, I didn't know how crazy I could get, knowing that the restriction that I placed on it was a maximum of 50 grams of filament.  

After exporting it as an .STL file and opening it in Matter Control, I had to go in and manipulate the drawing.  Truth be told, the picture above is my 4th try, justifying why it took so long.  The first sketch that I created was well over the threshold, using 117 grams of filament.  Oops!  Another component that helped out was that I changed the fill percent to 15% to limit the amount of filament that was being used inside the bridge.  In hindsight, I might have gone up a little bit more.  Either way, it was time to print.  

The final product turned out a whole lot cleaner and refined than my previous builds.  Once again, this is a good feeling after getting pretty frustrated with some poor prints.  I didn't apply too much glue and I waited until it was hot and ready to print before applying the glue.

Once the bridge was printed, it was time to test.  This was kind of a bummer, knowing that it will be my shortest-lived project to date.  I mean really, I was going to be destroying something that I spent 6 hours creating from start to finish.  Regardless, for the sake of modeling and building a lesson plan, this had to be done.  

I had my two (not-so)trustworthy helpers, my two boys, take the supplies to the back yard where we would simulate the stress test on the bridge.  They obliged, but not before they grabbed the hose, chased a lizard, and tried to take each other's toys away from each other.  Boys. Yes.

We set up the bridge on top of two cornhole boards. If you don't know what that is, it's a great game.  However, in this instance, business needed to be taken care of.  The bridge was propped up, then clamped down onto the boards.  This may have compromised the test a little, but I needed to make sure that the bridge didn't slip before reaching its failure point.  Either way, here is a video of what happened next (Thanks to Andrew Stadel for always taking really cool videos of estimation 180 tasks.  I tried, but my kids were, well, kids):

We took a measuring cup, one at a time for the first half of filling the bucket, and dumped them into a 5 gallon bucket.  As the video shows, the bridge was able to support 43 cups of water.  Next up was determing how much weight that actually was.  Knowing that 1 gallon of water is approximately 8.345 pounds, and there are 16 cups in a gallon, this led to some basic calculations.

1 cup = 0.522 pounds
43 cups = 22.427 pounds

Negating the weight of the bucket and the string (for the sake of time and ease and not wanting to buy a more precise scale than my bathroom one), this bridge was able to support 22.427 pounds of weight.  Not too shabby for a first timer!

Again, thanks to Andrew for helping inspire the video and estimation portion of the lesson.  Also, thank you to Frank Noschese and Steph Reilly for helping me out on the Twitters to find the appropriate standards that hook on to this lesson.

It was a sad day to see my project crash and burn, but it sure was a fun one to build something and test it out with my own kids.

Happy Broken Bridge Fishing

I've been called a lot of names throughout my life.  Some of them aren't worth repeating, while others should probably never be said again.  There are a few that will always stay with me and remind me of the reasons for which I work so hard.  From the day that I was called a graduate to the day that she called me her fiancee, my college days (and shortly thereafter) meant a lot.  Even the day when I was called husband was one that will hold a special place in my memory.  There is one day, however, that changed everything.  That day, June 3rd, 2010, when the nurse looked at me and asked "would you like to cut the cord, Dad?" 

Dads, to some deserved degree, don't get very much credit in the grand scheme of parenting.  According to Census.Gov, "In 2011, 23 percent of married-couple family groups with children under 15 had a stay-at-home mother".  Traditionally speaking, we are responsible for bringing home the majority of the income, although that has changed dramatically within my generation.

According to The US Census Bureau, "one out of every three (children) live in biological father-absent homes".  This, as fatherhood.org has put it, is a crisis.  But today, as I say good night to my two boys, want to celebrate the fathers who did stick around, who have been able to avoid tragedy to be there as the father figure that every child should grow up with.  Amongst all of the statistics of dads not being there, there are a large number of us who are.

Unfortunately, so many dads never get the chance to see their child grow up.  I am encouraged to be a better father because my best friend never had the chance to.  3 weeks before his son was born, he passed away in a motorcycle accident.  To this day, I wonder what the world would be like for that young man if his father would still be here.  Fortunately, his widow has remarried a wonderful man and that child will always have a father who is there for him.  Still, much of what I do is to honor his name and ensure that, if I am so fortunate to have him looking down on me, he is proud of the things I have done to give my sons the best life possible.

Two songs that I liked growing up seemed strange to be in my "favorites" list.  Everclear had a song called "Father of Mine" and LL Cool J released a song called "Father".  To backtrack a little, I love my dad and look up to him for so many reasons.  He wasn't around a ton as we were growing up because he worked nightshift at a gold mine, making sure that we had what we needed to succeed.  Once we got old enough, he started coaching our soccer and baseball teams, even though he knew nothing about soccer and very little about baseball.  It wasn't about being "dad of the year" - it was about being present.  My brother and I notice that and appreciate it by paying that forward within our own lives.

So why did I like these songs (and still do)?  The more and more I think of it, it makes sense.  Listening to Everclear and LL Cool J talk about how hard it was growing up made it easier for me to appreciate a dad who was, and still is, doing the very best he can to give us a better life than he had.  For that, Dad, I thank you.  I thank you for always treating mom with respect, for never giving up on the family, and working through tough times to make things work.  We didn't have everything, but we had enough to reach for our dreams.

"All I ever wanted, all I ever needed, was a father... that's all", say the lyrics in LL Cool J's song, "Father".  While so many of our students don't have a dad at home, they have a father figure at school.  For me, it was tough to bring up dads in the classroom, especially teaching in a high poverty area.  For fear of inciting terrible memories, I shied away from fathers in conversation.  In hindsight, this was a terrible idea.  In hindsight, I was doing more harm than good by avoiding conversations that celebrated what good fathers do and how to properly treat a woman and be a part of a family.  Instead, I focused on the moms and how good they were.  In reality, all that many of those students needed was a father (or father figure).

"Take me back to the day, when I was still your golden boy"

Once again, the reality hits home for far too many of our kids.  For me, I loved this song because no matter how frustrated or overwhelmed my dad was, he always came back and made his two sons feel like they were his world.  As teachers, as men, we have an opportunity to be positive role models for so many kids whose dads are no longer around.  Not just the ones who walked out or simply "gave (them) a name", but ones who were always gone on business, passed away, were military men, or so many other reasons that kept them from partaking in the honor of watching their children grow.

One of the hardest parts about no longer being in the classroom is the lack of direct effect that I have on children.  Sure, there were kids who never accepted that connection, but their experience was surely trumped by the countless others who longed for a positive male role model in their life.  I'll never forget D, whose dad left the family when he was a kid, leaving a 7 year-old to tend to man business around the house.  I still talk to him, a proud young man who has graduated high school and is looking to become a doctor.  You can tell me that it's tough, but don't tell me that it's impossible to change a kid's life.

How about A, a kid who lost his dad to an internal battle with himself, leaving behind a wife and three young kids?  A is now a sophomore in high school, achieving grades and accolades in band and working harder than I've ever seen, all while being supported by his family (and me on the sidelines).  I'd like to think that somewhere along the line, he was able to look for a male role model of how to strive for success.  He is on his own path to achieve exactly that.

There will be plenty of times in which I let my own children down for one reason or another.  Whether it is telling them no to something they want or missing a class activity that they really wanted me to attend, I'm certain that I will be far from a perfect father.  At the same time, I will treat them with the same expectations that I held for the 185 children that I had the honor to teach every year.

All I can really hope for is that I celebrate the successes, encourage the struggles, and embrace the challenges of my own children the same as the students that walked through my classroom for the past 7 years.  After all, this is the Dad Life.

Happy "Be A Great Dad" Fishing