The Lincoln-Way East Bridge contest had 151 entries this year. 71 entries were from the Physics classes, 41 from Engineering Physics classes, 34 from Chemistry classes, and 5 were from teachers.
The winning bridge was determined by efficiency (mass held divided by the mass of the bridge). The winner of the contest was Arnold Grunert, whose bridge weighed 20.6 grams (about the mass of 4 nickels) and it held 46.62 kg (around 102 pounds), with an efficiency of 2263. The 2nd-4th places are as follows: Andrew Bollman (2234 efficiency), Jacob Chay (1710 efficiency) and Kyle Arnold (1632). All four of these students are entitled to represent LWE at the regional contest held at IIT (Illinois Institute of Technology) on February 8th, 2022.
About the competition, Mr. Murphy said, "I was very impressed with the quality of the bridges and the number of bridges entered into the competition. This has been a great tradition at LWE and the students did a great job in participation and effort. It is great to see the students work on projects outside of the classroom that relate to topics learned in the classroom. It was obvious from their designs and results, that many students devoted a lot of hard work and time into this project. I think the most rewarding part of this project is to hear the students talk the next day about what they could do differently next year to increase the efficiency of their bridges. It seems that this project sparks the creativity of a lot of students and fosters hard work and creativity. "
The teachers involved in the bridge contest at East were Michael Murphy, Wes Cooley, Maria Wilson, Dawn McAvoy, Jaime Voliva, Beth Swaney, Shane Tucker, Carlie Premo, Ryan Lodes, and Nick Schwieger.
