Albury High School Popsicle Bridge record breaker!
By davow88 on March 1, 2010 - Modified November 7, 2010
We run a competition here at Albury High in Australia for our Yr 12 Engineering Studies students involving max. 50 popsicle sticks, PVA wood glue and 2m of extra strong thread. Structures have to span 400mm and are centrally loaded. Here’s a photo of our 2010 winner which weighed in at 69 grams and held 58kgs giving an efficiency using the formula on your website if I used it correctly of around 12000!
A 12,000 ratio would require it to hold 828kg, or 1,821lbs.
I’ve seen 5 level Baily bridges from WW-II that supported Sherman tanks using the same general design principals. Heavy cables where supported at the center by a built-up underside structure, as this level of arching was not possible. Still, the cables added hugely to the strength of the structure.
Hi, would you be able to show me some ropes as to how I can build a bridge like yours? For instance, what do I have to take into consideration in order to be able to build a strong bridge? Would appreciate it very much for your help. Thanks.
Can we see a short how to on this? This would be an awesome home project
this bridge is friggen awesome. I was surprised to see how many popsicle sticks you used and how much weight you put on there.
That is so cool but do you know if you can make one of those out of 200 pop sicle sticks.
Thanks for sharing the photo.
The efficiency equation works like this:
Take the mass held: 58kg and covert it to grams, 58,000g. Then divide that by the mass of the bridge: 69g. That equals 841.
Yeah Garrett i dont really understand what you just said can you explain that?
The bridge efficiency is the ratio of the mass supported to the mass of the bridge.
mass_supported / mass_of_bridge = efficiency
In this case:
58000 / 69 = 840.58 efficiency
This is different to the original posters claim of 12,000 efficiency.
The use of string/thread in this design is a major structural element.