PORT ANGELES — Three months of planning and construction, hundreds of Popsicle sticks and untold hours of work will end with the sound of splintering wood today (Saturday) at the Popsicle Stick Bridge Competition in Seattle as five Port Angeles High School students test the bridges they designed and built.
At stake is a $500 scholarship and defending the school’s tradition of consistently placing in the top three for the past 13 years.
Port Angeles has a reputation of being a school to beat at the competition, said Derek Johnson, adviser and physics instructor.
3rd strongest
Last year, Port Angeles student Rachel Lindquist’s bridge was third-strongest in the state and carried 758 pounds, he said.
Bridges in the contest, which weigh less than a pound, have held nearly 1,000 pounds of weight on a 4-inch-by-4-inch area before breaking.
This year, 18-year-old senior Lance Alderson, whose bridge took fourth place just behind Lindquist, is making one last attempt at the top prize with an arched, cantilevered bridge.
“It’s a naturally strong shape,” Alderson said.
Junior Kelley Mayer, 15, who took seventh place in 2011, is also making another attempt at beating a group of home-schoolers from South King County — the only team that consistently scores higher than Port Angeles.
The contest, sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers, pairs students with working civil engineers to learn the basics of engineering, designing bridges that are judged equally on their strength and aesthetic value.
Strength and beauty
The bridges will be displayed, judged for aesthetic value, then tested with a hydraulic testing machine at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.
Civil engineers Chris Hartman of Zenovic & Associates; Gene Unger, a former Clallam County engineer; and Joe Donisi, Clallam County assistant engineer, have visited the school once a week since November to mentor students interested in building bridges for the contest and will choose three of the five bridges to enter in the contest.
The other two bridges from Port Angeles will be tested but will not be a part of the official contest.
Scholarship awarded
The top Port Angeles bridge builder will get a $500 college scholarship funded by a consortium of Port Angeles-area engineers.
Each year, the rules for height, length and required design elements change, just as conditions change from one project to another, so a winning bridge from one year cannot return to win again.
Some students excel at the design phase, others in construction, Unger said.
A well-designed bridge can be ruined with poor construction, while a lesser design can be strong with solid construction, the engineers said.
“One bad joint, and it’s done,” Unger said.
“It’s a blend of technical and artistic natures,” Hartman said.
“We try to mirror the real-world design process. The public is not happy if they have a strong bridge, but it’s ugly,” Unger said.
Lessons learned
First-year bridge builders learned some hard lessons.
Freshman Zoe Bozich, 15, put together a solid-looking bridge with a peaked center-point and more than a dozen support trusses.
Early testing was successful, giving the first-year entrant encouragement.
“One truss held 120 pounds,” Bozich said.
However, a badly placed support structure took all the weight off her solid trusses, and Wednesday, Bozich said she will be happy if the bridge holds a mere 120 to 150 pounds of pressure before it breaks.
Fellow freshman James Gallagher, 13, also had difficulties with his first bridge effort.
Gallagher said he tried to keep his design simple, but it didn’t execute as well in reality as it did on paper.
He guessed his bridge would hold less than 120 pounds.
Many of the students were working on their second or third design.
The first design is often more of a fantasy, sometimes overly complicated or fancy, then reality sets in, Gallagher said.
Freshman Jeremy Choe, 15, had to start from scratch after completing his first bridge, which was solid but failed to meet height guidelines.
His second design, which still needed to lose 6 grams of weight to meet the rules, was being glued together with barely 72 hours remaining before the competition.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
