Garrett’s Note: I am not sure why the author called this a toothpick bridge, as it looks more like Balsa wood. The author did not not give any information about this bridge, which is unfortunate. I would have like to known about why he chose this design, and what the bridge was trying to accomplish.

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.

This is a very nicely built popsicle stick bridge. If you want to build a strong popsicle stick bridge, than I would suggest that try something like this. Because all the popsicle sticks are glue together, this bridge will have amazing lateral support. I used this idea on a lesser scale on my Prairie Popsicle Stick Bridge.

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. They score the bridges on efficiency (I won at that!) and aesthetics.

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

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!

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

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

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.