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Sponsored by: |
Purpose The purpose of this competition is to give students a Civil Engineering experience through the construction of a popsicle stick suspension bridge. Construction (1) Teams will construct a suspension bridge using only the following materials:
(b) any type of glue (c) string (String is defined as cotton thread or twine. No hemp or manmade fibers can be used.) (d) cement blocks used as weights (2) No tongue depressors can be used. (3) To qualify for evaluation, the central span of the bridge must be at least 100 cm wide (measured from the inside of each support pier), and the road bed of this span must be actually supported by the string. (4) A “suspension bridge” is defined (for this competition) as a San Francisco Golden Gate-type bridge. The suspension bridge can have only two supporting piers (like the Golden Gate Bridge). (5) The suspension bridge must have a level, seamlessly constructed roadway that will allow a small test car to easily roll from one end of the bridge to the other. The width of the roadbed will be the length of a “regular” Popsicle stick. (6) Please build your bridge in a way that will facilitate transportation, although we understand that the bridge will have to be adjusted at the site. Evaluation (1) A bridge must comply with all of the construction guidelines to qualify for evaluation in this competition. (2) Prior to evaluating the bridge, the student builder must demonstrate that the road bed (between the two bridge piers) is actually supported by the cables. The student will be asked to raise and lower the cables demonstrating that the road bed will actually rise and fall. (3) Teams will be evaluated based on the following criteria:
(b) Quality of construction (c) Beauty of the bridge (4) Participants must remove their bridges from the Automobile building. This implies that the bridges will either be taken home or disposed of properly.
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