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 bridge design before. I was really surprised. One commenter said, “So if this bridge weighed one pound, it could have held up my car.”

The first time the bridge was tested it did not break. The testing machine was set to only apply 250 pounds. This bridge was too strong for that! Here is the bridge after the second testing:

The secret of a strong bridge design

As you can see, the bridge stayed mostly intact. I talked to a couple engineers at the event and asked them what they thought made my bridge break. One suggested that the bridge failed in torsion, as I did not have any diagonal braces in the bridge. That is definitely a design flaw I will fix if I do this again. I would love to try and break an efficiency of 5000. That would be a strong bridge indeed!

Here is the rather cool certificate I received at the testing site:

For more information on this competition, see atlantatoothpickbridge.org. I encourage anyone in the Atlanta area to try and go to this event. It is free and open to all, both young and old. Try your hand at making the strongest bridge. And when you do, send me photos of your bridge

Post Tags: bridge, design, photos, tips

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