Student Designs : Toy Bridges Yield to Crush of Competition

A UC Irvine team didn’t have to eat 350 Popsicles to get the building material for one of their ornate Popsicle-stick bridges.

“We just bought (the sticks) at a hobby shop,” said UCI senior Sam Alkhaznadar, who sat outside with about 100 students from 10 schools and watched bridge after bridge get smashed to smithereens by a jawlike vise or a barbell weight.

Alkhaznadar and his fellow engineering students were participants in the annual Popsicle stick bridge-building contest, in which students test their knowledge of engineering principles by designing a bridge that can withstand as much pressure as possible.

The students built the flimsy-looking but relatively strong bridges at their home schools before the contest, then brought them to UCI for the competition, held annually as part of the American Society of Civil Engineers conference.

Each one- to two-foot bridge was then subjected to one of two tests--either steadily increasing pressure from a vise, or barbell weights placed one on top of the other on the bridge.

Gives In to 2,590 Pounds

The UCI team built two bridges in each category, winning in the vise category and placing third in the barbell competition. Jeff Johnson was chief engineer of both UCI entries, and his first-place bridge withstood a hefty 2,590 pounds before succumbing to the vise’s grip.

Students from as far away as Cal Poly San Luis Obispo whooped and cheered the destruction of each bridge--except, of course, their own.

Harvey Oslick of USC cradled his splintered creation, ready to glue it back together, after its gutsy second-place showing of 674 pounds under the vise. “It took about two days to build this,” he said.

UCI students, instantly recognizable with their “Engineering’s a Beach” sweat shirts from last month’s Engineering Week, were excited about their impressive showing. “Nobody could believe that bridge held up so long,” Alkhaznadar said of his classmate’s winning design.

Although the students received no class credit for the bridges, Alkhaznadar said the effort was worthwhile. “Everything we learn in school is theoretical, and this shows how well the theories apply.”