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Winning spaghetti bridge holds 68kg
Spontaneous applause greeted the winners of the University of the Sunshine Coast’s inaugural spaghetti bridge competition after their 219g structure, made from only pasta and superglue, was able to carry a weight of 68kg.
Civil Engineering students Ryan Hofman and Sean Thrussell applied principles they had learned in the subject, Mechanics of Materials, to construct a model bridge that could carry a load 311 times its own weight.
The contest was held at USC’s Lecture Theatre 4 on Thursday 24 March and involved 10 groups of two students testing bridges they had designed and built over several weeks.
There was plenty of anticipation and excitement as each team stepped forward with their bridges, and the lecture theatre was filled with gasps and sympathetic groans as each bridge eventually buckled, snapped or simply splintered under weight during testing.
USC’s Senior Lecturer in Civil Engineering Dr Terry Lucke said the contest had been a great team-building exercise for the students and had inspired creativity and an enthusiasm for engineering.
He said the process of designing and constructing model bridges from spaghetti was a valuable learning experience.
“It demonstrates some basic principles of engineering because spaghetti reacts to the five internal stresses and strains within a structure – tension, compression, bending, shear and torsion,” he said.
“By constructing a model bridge, students are able to examine the effects of these forces individually and combined.”
Students used cameras to record the demise of their bridges for further analysis to determine how their designs could be improved.
Rebecca Campbell of Sunshine Coast based consulting engineering firm Covey Associates congratulated the University on holding the exciting competition and presented the winners with $200 in prizemoney and a perpetual shield.
Ms Campbell said she was impressed by the students’ work in a competition that encouraged students to think innovatively and to interact directly with Sunshine Coast engineering companies.
— Terry Walsh