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Building model bridges that would stand up to engineering tests was a challenge relished by a team of five Orewa College students this month.
On the 4th of August the team of Year 10 students – Jannik Wittgen, Dylan Werton, Kelsey Beet, Sam Howarth and Troy Lawson – went to the annual Aurecon Bridge Building Competition in Auckland, taking part alongside other Auckland schools and some from the Waikato.
It took the Orewa team more than 30 hours to design and build two bridges from materials selected from a kit of 300 popsicle sticks, 5m of string, a pot of glue and a cardboard tube.
One of their bridges was a K-Truss design and the other an original triangle design.
Both were tested by Aurecon engineers for strength, aesthetics, innovation and functionality.
The better of the two, the K-Truss, held 114.1kg, making it the fifth strongest out of 40 bridges entered in the competition.
Unfortunately, this was no match for the winning bridge, which held over 300kg!
The students described the competition as “a cool experience”. “It was a great opportunity and we learnt lot of valuable information,” Kelsey said.
