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 [...]

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.

Yes, this is one of the coolest bridges I have ever seen. Built by J.C. Booth Middle for the Science Olympiad Georgia State Finals in 2003, it placed 3rd. For those of you who don’t know Booth, keep reading. Booth Middle School has won the Georgia State Finals as a team for longer than I [...]

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 the [...]

Objective: To build a boomilever with the greatest efficiency. Basic Design: There are two basic types of boomilevers. First is the tension boomilever, where the tension chord is longer than the compression chord. Second there is the compression boomilever, which is the opposite of the tension. It is generally accepted that the tension boomilever is [...]

I just found some old pics of my first ever Science Olympiad bridge. These photos are 7 years old. Many props to my mom for keeping them. The bridge weighed 58 grams if my memory serves me well. It held the entire 15kg with ease. It probably could have held 100lbs because it was so [...]

Yesterday (Nov. 11, 2006) was the Science Olympiad competition, the Westminster Invitational. This has to be one of the earliest tournaments in Science Olympiad. Normally the invitationals aren’t until January. The boomilevers there were not impressive (including mine). Only one boomilever had an efficiency score over 200, which did happen to be mine. I placed [...]

This bridge was definitely not my best, but it does bring back memories. It was the second bridge built by my old Science Olympiad Bridge Building partner, David, and I. As you can see, we were still in the beginning of our bridge building career. I assume David is still building bridges, as his father [...]

This balsa bridge was built by some students of mine for a Science Olympiad competition. It spanned 14 inches, weighed 8.1 grams, and held 29 pounds. That puts its efficiency at 1630.

My first event was Circuit Lab, which I don’t know much about. My partner ended up doing most of the work, I helped connecting wires when I could.Rocks and Minerals went okay, or so I thought. Ended up with 7th. My tower broke too soon, weighing 6.5 and only holding 6.8kg. At least I worried [...]