Bridge Building

Description

Teams will construct a bridge on site from one 8-oz box of dry spaghetti, one meter of 1/2-inch wide masking tape, and one stick of oil-based modelling clay.

Competition

Each team will have 40 minutes to construct a bridge on site from the materials provided. Two pairs of safety scissors will also be available for team use.

The bridge will be tested to determine its maximum strength by adding sand to 16 oz Styrofoam™ cup hanging from the center of the bridge (like a bucket) by a string attached to a paper clip 'bar' that spans the width of the bridge. Sand will be poured into the cup until the bridge collapses. The bridge must include a location at its center to hang the cup.

Other Information

Each team should bring to the competition a log book outlining the construction and testing of bridge designs in preparation for the event. Dates and times should be noted in the book. Data, data tables, and sketches will be typical entries. Information should be entered at the time noted in the log book. Summarizing what was done hours, days, or weeks after the actual experiment is very poor scientific practice.

(Logbook example: October 17, 2005, 3:30 P.M. We tried to make girders from the spaghetti and connect them togther in triangles. The bridge only held 45 grams before tipping over.)

Lab books should be brought to the Olympiad and will be collected after the Opening Ceremony. All lab books will be examined by a team of three people and scored (not ranked) on a scale of 1-4 (high=4, low=1, no book = 0).

Teams will be ranked based on the formula:

                         (Mass in cup, in grams) * (length of bridge, in cm)
                                               mass of bridge, in grams

The team score will be the sum of the ranking and lab book score.

Lab book scoring is not designed to be punitive. It is the hope and expectation of the judges that all lab books will receive a score of 4. There is no set or expected presentation format, except it should be clear to the judges that design testing was performed by the competitors, and that the competitors thought about how they would construct the bridge before they arrived at the competition.