Model Bridge Building - How to Make a Model Bridge
Model bridge building is a popular pastime, where hobbyists create bridge models from various materials like spaghettis, toothpicks, cardboard, skewers, balsa wood, etc. Miniature bridge making is also often used in education in areas like physics and engineering. Numerous competitive bridge building contents are held annually, with various rules and goals.
Popsicle Stick Bridge
Popsicle stick bridge is a simple bridge structure made of wooden popsicle sticks. Construction of popsicle stick bridge can be great exercise for testing structurally stable bridge. A simple beginner-grade popsicle stick bridge can be created with as little as seven sticks, while more elaborate models can use hundreds of them.
Toothpick Bridge
Toothpick bridge is a simple bridge construction made of wooden toothpicks. Creation of toothpick bridge can be used for testing the basic processes of bridge building, truss structures, resilience, capacity, structural strength, main forces that affect the bridge components, creativity and experimental bridge designs.
Balsa Wood Bridge
Balsa wood bridge is a simple bridge structure made of small individual pieces or sticks of balsa wood. Balsa wood bridge building is an educational technology that promote practical application of knowledge that students learned during a section or unit covering a related physics or engineering topic. Out of the all possible variations of small-scale bridge building, balsa wood bridges are most advanced, most difficult to build but also capable of carrying incredible weights.
Science Olympiad Bridge Building
Science Olympiad is large-scale educational tournament organized in over 7000 middle and high schools from the United States. Science Olympiad is a yearly competition in which students compete in the multiple levels of tournament competition and bridge building is one of its most regular competitions. The subject matter covered in tournaments are usually separated into five main categories.
