I just found some old pics of my first ever Science Olympiad bridge. This photo is 7 years old. Many props to my mom for keeping it.
Left to Right: My coach, David, Me
The bridge weighed 58 grams if my memory serves me well. It held the entire 15kg with ease. It probably could have held [...]
Now that the 2007 Science Olympiad season is well over, I am releasing photos of a concept boomilever I made before regionals. Here is a video of the testing of the boomilever:
The boomilever broke because of all the force that was applied outwards on the bottom chords. The boomilever simply “split” apart and [...]
This is an older bridge I came across when browsing through my old Science Olympiad photos. I used both Balsa and Basswood to build this bridge. This bridge was part of my design process which ended up with my SO winning bridge in 2004
This balsa bridge was built by some students of mine. It spanned 14 inches, weighed 8.1 grams, and held 29 pounds. That puts its efficiency at 1630.
This photo makes the bridge look a little lopsided. That wasn’t the case, however.
Here is a photo of where the bridge broke. Click the picture to get a really [...]
This balsa tower was 12 inches tall, 8 inches wide at the base, and tapered to a 2 inch square at the top. I only have about forty pounds of sand, so I ended up adding any heavy object in sight to the bucket. After putting in the ceramic mug used to pour the sand, [...]
Chamblee has always done well in Bridge Building. In 2001, they won the State finals in this event.
This bridge is from the 2003 GA State Tournament, the same tournament the Booth Bridge is from.
I was never able to fully develop and use this bridge. I got this idea from talking with a Science Olympiad coach in Ohio. Now I wish I had gone ahead and put more work into this. The next year, the bridge rules changed so that I could not use this concept.
The trick was to [...]
What is the coolest bridge on the planet? This is one of them:
Coolest Bridge
I still love Scotland’s Firth of Forth bridge, and the famous one from my birthplace, the Golden Gate bridge. But that one that connects Sweden and Denmark is pretty cool! I wonder what it feels/sounds like when going under the water. It [...]
This bridge was built by Michael in Quebec.
I have a bridge I built for a physics for engineers class I’m taking in cegep (QUEBEC). My partner and I didn’t have much confidence in it, but it blew the competition away! The design was a fairly straightforward arch as you can see. We primarily focused on [...]
Here are some pictures of European bridges I took on our family trip in December of 2004. Seeing these bridges was the highlight of the trip for me. Unfortunately we only were able to drive over one of the bridges, the Tay River Bridge. However, we did spent a lot of time walking on the [...]
I built this bridge for the 2005 Fernbank Science Center bridge design event. This is the strongest bridge I have ever built. The bridge spanned 16 inches, weighed 37 grams, and held 346 pounds. That puts its efficiency over 4200! I had never even come close to getting this amount of strength out of a [...]
It’s taken me just under 48 hours to get this far. Although i wouldn’t say its completely finished.. it’s a good as. I might just polish it off with a lick of paint and other aesthetically pleasing type things. As you can see, I’ve modelled it on the Pratt Truss. Although, I didn’t do any “real” plans, just rough drawings
Hello everybody my name is First Timer and I had to make a balsa wood bridge with theses specs: 40.5 cm long, 11-12 cm wide 13-25 cm high, must have a span of 26 cm, peek of the span must be at least 9 cm, and this bridge could weigh no more than 16 grams
Hey guys it’s me again, First Timer. Taking the critiques you guys gave, I rebuilt the bridge. This was going to a county Science Fair which I think is pretty cool considering I started learning about bridges about 2 months ago. The specs of the bridge are
Here is a picture of the George Washington Bridge that a friend of mine took recently.
Someone tipped me off to this cool bridge which is in the Grand Canyon:
The Skywalk
It looks a bit scary but very cool nonetheless.
This was one of my earlier bridges. I built it after talking with my uncle, who is a mechanical engineer. He suggested that I try using an I-beam. This was a very good idea, but my construction skills at the time were not the best. In theory an I-beam is excellent for bridges, but I [...]
Here is the Science Olympiad bridge J.C. Booth built for the Georgia State Tournament in 2005. I don’t remember exactly what place it got, but am pretty sure in placed in the top 3. This bridges uses the typical design for that year, with slight modifications
We had some of our cousins spend the weekend with us. After the initial greetings, Matt asked me, “Can we go finish the bridge?” We had started building a bridge last year, when they came over to visit. Matt had finished one side of the bridge. While I did help him design it, Matt did [...]
These are some pictures of a bridge I built mainly out of boredom, but also since I have an interest in engineering. It’s a large cantilever bridge, meaning it has two arms that extend beyond their piers that hold up a center suspended span. It’s 10′ 2″ long and as of right now is hanging across my bedroom ceiling
Hi this is Hyun Seok Yoon. As the title says, I just made my first bridge for Science Olympiad! Although it took me 12 hours (whew..!) I could see the good result! It held 15kg!
Boy does this bridge bring back memories. I built this bridge in 2001, in the 7th grade. It was my first attempt at building a bridge on my own after building this bridge with my partner.
I had wanted to make an arch bridge, much like the Booth Bridge, but I didn’t have the building skills [...]
Some friends of mine recently took a road trip to to PA. On the way, they stopped by a famous bridge and took this awesome picture:
Click for a closer view
This is the New River Bridge in West Virginia. It was the longest single-arch steel span bridge when it was built in 1977. In 2003, however, [...]
Nic’s design held a weight of 224kg and had a final efficiency of 1020. It did not shear or snap at any member, but bowed in the second third of member C-E. This member did have angled bracing to stop bowing and this brace did not snap it was only the glue joins in this brace that failed. The truss ballooned out at the point when 2.2kN of force was applied. It was at this point that the test was stopped
These are the photos of a popsicle bridge that I made for a bridge building contest at my university in Spain. The weight of the bridge was 3.9kg, and the bridge held 700kg without breaking. This gives it an efficiency score of 180. The dimensions of underneath the arc are 90cm x 45cm.
Build This Bridge
This popsicle stick bridge was made from 40, unmodified popsicle sticks. The bridge spanned 12 inches, was 4 inches tall and 3 inches wide. I used only Elmer’s white glue to build the bridge. It weighed 57.4 grams (0.13 pounds), and held 90 pounds. Its efficiency score was 712.
This was the [...]
This popsicle bridge was made from 58 unmodified popsicle sticks. It was 25 inches long, 4 inches tall, and 3 inches wide. I used only Elmer’s white glue to build the bridge. It weighed 86.5 grams, and held 45 pounds. Its efficiency score was 248.
Build This Bridge
I redesigned this bridge from the earlier version. [...]
Have you wanted to make a strong popsicle stick bridge that used 100 popsicle sticks or less? This popsicle bridge was made from 98 unmodified popsicle sticks and WeldBond glue. It was 21 inches long, 4 inches tall, and 4 inches wide. It weighed about 150 grams, and held 140 pounds. With less than 100 [...]
Hi, I just wanted to share the excitement…by using ideas from your website (recommended by my son’s Cub Scout leader) my son Jackson and I were able to build a Popsicle bridge with approximately 125 sticks. It set a new record by holding 500 lbs. for about 15 seconds before breaking! Thanks for the great ideas…not bad for the first try
I have always been fascinated by sailboats. I loved to visit my grandparents in Florida, because it meant sailboat rides.
This is not the first time I have made a little sailboat. But it is the first popsicle boat I have made.
I started out using only the “reject” popsicle sticks that I would not use [...]
This is a popsicle stick bridge I built while in the last few weeks of my fall college semester. I used 924 popsicle sticks to build this bridge. This bridge was 5 feet long, 10 inches tall, and 8 inches wide. I had to sort through 2600 popsicle sticks to find enough usable ones. The first testing of the bridge consisted of 220 pounds worth of weights. The second testing included putting a piece of plywood on top of the bridge and me standing on it (170 pounds). We noticed that one end diagonal chord was bending tremendously, so I decided to call off any more testing until I could repair that one piece
Built by Bill H.
Here is the email Bill sent me:I started making bridges about a year ago and have pictures to share with you. For the first bridge I used a set of plans that I found free on the internet from a guy who was in the army. The bridge plans were [...]
This bridge won the 2004 GA State Science Olympiad Bridge Building competition. It weighed 9.47 grams, spanned 35cm, and held 15kg without breaking. The efficiency score was 1584. This bridge was made completely from Basswood. No Balsa or other wood was used.
The top chord was made from 2 sticks of 1/16″ square pieces, [...]
The American Society of Civil Engineers has been putting on an annual popsicle stick bridge competition for high schools in western Washington for the last 13 years. Last year, I entered with a 350 gram, 30 inch long bridge that carried 567 pounds under their hydraulic press. Their website is http://www.seattleasce.org/ymf/popsiclebridge.html . They score the bridges on efficiency (I won at that!) and aesthetics (I don’t know why I didn’t win at that)
We found that it holds 5lbs so far and potentialy more, considering our first bridge broke with a large ball of string as the weight and our second broke with a coke can. I think our success rate was pretty high
Bridge constructed with drinking straws & spaghetti. Pinned connections between straws with spaghetti.
Bridge span across deck = 50cm, supported below at half span.
Was skeptical about the bridge holding the weight of the brick but it do so easily.
I just completed a new toothpick bridge that’s quite different than my last one. It’s an arch made from curved trusses, formed once again with toothpicks and wood glue. This one won’t be tested either (sorry!) because it was made for a friend who creates custom action figure dioramas. But I designed the bridge to have the highest ratio of maximum load to bridge weight and some ad hoc tests made me pretty optimistic
I just finished this bridge a few days ago after working on it on and off for 3 months. It’s a cable stayed bridge design made with standard round toothpicks and wood glue.
The bridge is 31 inches long and just under 20 inches tall. The main road truss is 2 inches by 2 inches, constructed of beams of laminated toothpicks (3×3) and held together by individual toothpicks in a triangular truss pattern. The towers were constructed of laminated toothpick beams as well, but thicker (4×4). Then the suspension was created with 4 strands of thick string wound back and forth across the top of the towers
I really have nothing on this bridge. I have no idea what team it is from, how much it weighed, or how well it did at the Science Olympiad competition.
I have a picture of it, well, because I had a camera, and the bridge was there. So if you have seen this bridge before, and [...]
Today I found out that the Whooping Creek Bridge on Clem-Lowell road has been reopened. This was good and bad news for me. My brother and I drove down there this morning to try and film something for the music video we are making (see previous post). We thought it would be the perfect place [...]
