Last Thursday, December 5th, the bridge building teams of New Providence High School  went to the annual Union County College Bridge Building Competition, competing with 20 other schools in the county to see who could build the strongest bridge. There were a total of 6 teams from New Providence. Once teams of up to 6 members are formed in October, you can start building the bridge and depending on your experience in building, there are two divisions—beginner and advanced. There were 2 beginner teams and 4 advanced teams that participated in the competition. Before getting to the competition, some of you may be wondering, what is bridge building? 

In bridges for beginners, a basic criss cross structure is used, and that can take around 12-14 hours to build. Above is an example of that design (built by Kaylin Au, Cleo Trumbull, Faith Dobias, and Rachael Mishkind). Bridge building can be difficult and Eleni Potouridis, a member of a team in the novice division, says that “making a successful bridge starts with the design. It’s important to…[understand] how the bridge is affected by the weights and taking those factors into consideration when designing.” Despite how difficult it is, “it’s a fun experience and…it would be beneficial practice for STEM classes in college,” says Kaylin Au, a senior.

For the advanced division, the design can be more complicated and there is more freedom to make different kinds of structures. The main difference between beginner and advanced is the length of the bridge and the complexity of it (it has to be longer in advanced). 

In the competition, to determine the strength of the bridge, every interval on your bridge has to be numbered. The host of the competition will shout out a number and a weight needs to be put on that respective interval, as shown in picture 1. Each weight is 2.5 pounds. Once the bridge breaks or cracks, then that team is out. Whichever bridge lasts the longest and has the most weights gets 1st place. 

New Providence was able to bring home a win! The second novice team, Eleni Potouridis, Annika Ammitzboll, and Owen Fanning, won first place in the novice division. In the advanced division, the highest ranking team was Sahana Narayan, Alexander Thompson, Audrey Thompson, and Jonathan Laberov at 7th place.