Model Bridge Design

Highlighted balsa wood bridge videos from youtube.com.

More videos to come.

Here is a balsa wood bridge being tested to failure. You can tell how it breaks, which is pretty cool

This video has some excellent toothpick bridges. These bridges hold an incredible amount of weight before they break. You get to see it all on video

Video of a large Pratt truss bridge being loaded to failure

Enjoy watching this video of a quickly made bridge that supports a lot of weight. It also includes video footage of the Ignite Seattle popsicle stick bridge contest.

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!

Here is a video playlist I created from youtube of selected popsicle bridge movies.

You can see a variety of testing methods used in these videos. You can also see a lot of people not wearing eye protection, which is not a good idea. Always wear eye protection when testing a bridge.

This is a fun video showing the failure of a lot of Science Olympiad Elevated Bridges at the Crystal Lake Invitational 2009. Does anyone know what state this is held in? This video shows a lot of different bridge styles for Science Olympiad, so it might help give you a starting place for a design. Keep in mind that this is just at the invitational competition level

This is the absolute best video I have seen about building model bridges. Roy Coleman, the founder of the International Bridge Building Contest, gives a very informative presentation in this video. The presentation is over an hour long. He shows how to build a bridge from scratch. He is gearing his video towards the Chicago Regional Contest in particular. The concepts, however, apply to virtually all model bridge building projects. This is a great companion video to my 5 Steps to Building a Model Bridge ebook