Civil Engineering students Brett Morgan, Tony Dong and Randi Buchart are packing parts of their Popsicle stick bridge off to a national competition in Montreal.
Edmonton-A team of civil engineering students is heading to a national competition with plans to build a Popsicle stick bridge that can hold the weight of three pickup trucks.
Tony Deng, Randi Buchner and Brett Morgan are competing at the Canadian Popsicle stick bridge building competition, being held in Montreal this weekend.
Dong has reason to be confident: for the last two years he has broken records in the U of A competition. Last fall, a bridge he made using 100 Popsicle sticks and white glue held 970 pounds before breaking. The bridge he built last year held 746 pounds.
The team is confident the bridge they've designed and built for the national competition will out-perform entries from across the country.
"I don't know how much weight this will hold," said Dong, estimating that the team used something in the neighbourhood of 4,000 Popsicle sticks to build its bridge. For the local U of A competition, entries are restricted to 100 Popsicle sticks.
The team's bridge has been built in sections and will not be completely assembled until the team arrives at the competition.
"Now we have to figure out how to get it there without breaking it," said Buchner. "It's a whole new challenge."
Buchner and Morgan estimate they spent between 16 and 20 hours working on the bridge while Dong likely put in more than 100 hours designing the bridge, analyzing the design mathematically and making schematic drawings and building different segments. While all three students confess to giving up some of their studying time to the project, they say the trade-off is worth it.
"It's a challenge-a personal challenge," said Buchner.
The three are all in the final year as co-op students and have already added their participation in the competition to their resumes. Participating in projects like this a re ice breakers during job interviews and demonstrate an ability to apply classroom knowledge practically, to work well in a team and to take on tasks outside of their comfort zone.
Dong's motivation is pure curiosity: after setting records at the U of A, he wants to see what can be achieved nationally.
"I just want to see how much weight it holds," he said.