Popsicle Stick Bridge - Holds 2344 pounds before exploding.

Bridge I built for the 2008 contest at my school. I'm a first year student in Civil engineering technology at Mohawk College in Hamilton Ontario and this is my first attempt at building a popsicle stick bridge. It is made of only popsicle sticks and white glue.

In the foreground, you can see a monitor that is displaying real-time data and a graph of the performance of my bridge.

Bridge Weight = 0.54 pounds
Load before Failure = 2344.4 lbs
Pounds/Pound = 4,362

I took first place overall beating all 64 of the other qualifying bridges (they had to hold at least 1000 lbs/lb to qualify). Most of the other bridges were built by 2nd and 3rd year students who had built bridges before.

It was a lot of fun.

I apologize for the poor sound quality. I was filming this with a digital still camera and with all the sound equipment in there it's a little difficult to hear what they're saying. If you listen carefully though, when things really get moving, you can hear him say "four thousand" he's referring to me breaking the 4,000 lbs/lb mark that nobody was able to match.

If you want to learn more about the competition, or see some pictures of past bridges, you can click on the link below.

http://www2.mohawkcollege.ca/events/popstick/popstickframeset.html

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• winner
• popsicle
• stick
• bridge
• model
• contest
• strongest
• Mohawk
• College
• testing
• civil
• engineering
• 2008

[cooroxd123]

How many popsicle sticke did you use?

[sgiven]

Honestly I didn't keep track. The sticks end up getting all chopped up into various sizes and then sanded down. I did some quick math and there's probably about 120 popsicle sticks worth of wood in the bridge but in reality it probably took closer to 200 sticks to get there. We don't have a limit on the number of sticks, just maximum dimensions and a limit of 250 grams.

[jserna23]

thats not a bridge, its just a test of how much compression the wood can take

[sgiven]

You should look up "deck arch bridge" when you get a chance. If I put a deck on my bridge that's what it would be. For our contest we don't need one.

[jserna23]

ok, so i can't see the video very well but is the machine applying the load at the top of it or is it compressing the truss inwards?

by the way you could arch the sticks

[sgiven]

The load is applied vertically down at the peak. Our rules limit the height so a true arch would have to be too shallow to be effective. It's the same principle though, but without the arching shape. Most of the force acts as compression in the main members but I had to make the supports and x members to keep these columns in place. It's a complete bridge. Check out the link in the info and you can see some better pictures. This was my 2008 bridge, 2009 held 2400lbs and I'm working on 2010 now.

[darkgemxx]

what a unique design and very impressive being able to hold that much weight

[chummithang]

i swear this bridge had an invisible block of gold in there. that is one crazy bridge dude. nice work. but i really wish that there was an auesthitically pleasing part of these competitions. thumbs up if u agree

[DocterGoodness]

lol thats awesome

[quinster11]

Hey Shane when you did the bridge project for structures 2 what initial load did you design for in sframe?

[jserna23]

thats cool. i'm in a bridge contest myself and possibly go into the same area as yourself after i graduate.