At the Lincoln-Way East Bridge contest, we had 156 entries. 55 entries were from the Physics classes, 82 from Engineering Physics classes, 12 from Chemistry classes, and 7 from teachers.
The LWE winner was Leo Grunert. His bridge had a mass of 19.0 grams (about the mass of 4 nickels) and it held 40.54 kg (around 90 pounds). The winning bridge is determined by efficiency. The equation for efficiency is the mass held divided by the mass of the bridge. Leo’s efficiency was 2134. Efficiency states that the bridge held 2134 times its own mass. The 2nd-4th places are as follows: Jack Hughes (1962 efficiency), Caden Genet (1909 efficiency) and Nicholas Porada (1667 efficiency). All four of these students are entitled to represent LWE at the regional contest held at IIT (Illinois Institute of Technology) on January 31st, 2023.
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, April Richter, Ryan Lodes, and Nick Schwieger.
