Garrett's Bridges

reader submitted articles

Albury High School Popsicle Bridge record breaker!

We run a comp 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!

Bridge Terms

Hey everybody once again it’s me, First Timer. I thought the one thing that would make this website even better would be some vocabulary on the parts of bridges. Here are a few terms that might help if you ever need to describe different aspects of a truss or bridge. Let’s start with “Arch”…

Classic ‘K-Truss’ Bridge Design (Balsa Wood)

For this balsa wood bridge, I used a ‘K-Truss’ design with seven vertical members and 6 ‘K-Trusses’ per side. The K’s were the most challenging part of the build, because I had to calculate each ones length, and the approximate measure of the angle I had to cut into each one. All in all, the bridge took around 10 hours of work over a three-day weekend (plus glue-drying time, of course). This website is where I originally found the ‘K-Truss’ […]

Coolest Popsicle Bridge

I have a bridge I built for a physics for engineers class I’m taking in cegep (QUEBEC). My partner and I didn’t have much confidence in it, but it blew the competition away! We primarily focused on keeping the weight of the bridge down. The bridge weighed in at 211 grams.

Dombiggers 1st bridge

A very nice looking Balsa wood bridge sent in from one of my readers. This bridge uses gussets and pin joints and spans 18 inches.

Drew’s Science Project

Drew’s science fair was this past Friday, and he won a special award/ribbon for a “Superior” project. I’ve attached photos of he with his tri-fold board. He built/destroyed two bridges in order to prove his hypothesis, and so built a third (as seen in the photo) to show his classmates what they’d looked like. He had to present his findings to a parent/teacher review board, and 3 of them came up to me after the fact, to say how well […]

First attempt at a DIY model bridge

It’s taken me just under 48 hours to get this far. Although i wouldn’t say its completely finished.. it’s a good as. I might just polish it off with a lick of paint and other aesthetically pleasing type things. As you can see, I’ve modeled it on the Pratt Truss. Although, I didn’t do any “real” plans, just rough drawings

First Timer’s First Bridge Design

Hello everybody my name is First Timer and I had to make a balsa wood bridge with theses specs: 40.5 cm long, 11-12 cm wide 13-25 cm high, must have a span of 26 cm, peek of the span must be at least 9 cm, and this bridge could weigh no more than 16 grams

First Timer’s Second Bridge Design!

Hey guys it’s me again, First Timer. Taking the critiques you guys gave, I rebuilt the bridge. This was going to a county Science Fair which I think is pretty cool considering I started learning about bridges about 2 months ago. The specs of the bridge are

Hell Gate Bridge 1/4 Scale

This post features one of the most intricate reader submitted bridges I have ever received. This is a model of the Hell Gate Bridge built by High Iron Models. Excellent work.