You might call them a bridge to the future.
120 teams made up of about 300 Central Illinois high school and middle school students were given an assignment. Build a bridge using identical components.
"The design of my bridge is an old design, the way old bridges were made,: said Daem Coke, a student at Chillicothe Elementary Center.
"We chose it because it looked like it would probably be able to support a lot of weight."
The budding engineers were only allowed to use 36 balsa wood sticks, a single sheet of card stock and one tube of glue. The other ingredients would have to come from their imaginations.
" We made notches on it like Lincoln logs so that they would stick together," said Fieldcrest High School student Jennifer Peterson. "And we used a lot of glue. a lot of glue."
The idea is to build the strongest bridge, although there are points awarded for aesthetics. And then, after all of that work comes the fun part. Breaking them.
Some of the bridges literally exploded while they were tested for strength.
"My bridge held triple digits," said Patrick Newhalfen of Fieldcrest High School. "It withstood exactly 100 pounds even. We were pretty happy."
Newhalfen's bridge performed well, but Bradley professor Souhail Elhouar, who oversees the Bridge Pal program, has seen even more astounding numbers.
"Our record holder is 308 pounds," said Elhouar. And the bridge weighed less than 100 grams, which is about a quarter of a pound. So it holds about 12-hundred times it's own weight."
"They're having fun," said Bradley engineering student Stacia Berwick. "They're learning that engineering is fun. And they're learning how to design something that's economical, meaning less weight that carries more."
The 19th annual Bridge Pal Competition also enlists the guidance of Bradley engineering students who serve as consultants. They help bridge the gap.
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