Engineer John Simmonds tests the strength of a student built bridge during the Professional Engineers of Ontario annual student Bridge Building Contest St. at Joseph-Scollard Hall Friday.
Marking National Engineering Month once again the local chapter of the Professional Engineers of Ontario hosted their annual student Bridge Building Contest St. at Joseph-Scollard Hall this past Friday.
Officials say the event, which was open to local students from grades 5 through 12, aims to foster innovation by introducing and discussing real life technical issues faced by modern engineers and gives students the opportunity to interact with local engineers in a casual, fun-filled atmosphere.
The students were to construct their bridges using only carpenter glue and a supplied balsa wood kit from the engineers but no additional materials such as metal pins, nails, screws and so on were allowed.
Then the student bridges were examined by the engineers and judged on craftsmanship, dimensional conformity, engineering content and load carrying ability.
And finally the exciting part of the bridge contest was the weight bearing portion that saw how much the bridge could hold before cracking under the pressure.
