Carol Englander
Biotech Mfg Providence Cohort
305 Memorial Union, 001 Roosevelt Hall (office)
Kingston, RI  02881
401 874 2036
englanca@etal.uri.edu
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Middle school students involved in the Science and Math Investigative Learning Experiences (SMILE) program from Central Falls, East Providence, South Kingstown, West Warwick and Woonsocket came to the URI campus in March to compete in SMILE’s annual Engineering Challenge.
Applying their knowledge of bridge designs and the compression and tension forces that act on a bridge, the middle school students worked with college students in science and engineering and
other majors to construct the strongest and most efficient model bridge they could build.
The students were taught how to use the West Point Bridge Designer
software to design and test a truss bridge. Afterwards, they drew a full size template of their bridge, with the correct geometry, component lengths and distance of the joints. Given a budget
and cost of materials, students determined the cost of their bridge and modified their design to meet specifications if necessary.

Construction equipment included bamboo chopsticks, glue guns, cardboard,
straws and ratchet action pruning shears. They kept track of expenditures for additional supplies and their returns on the inventory list. An accurate account of team expenses was submitted at the end of the Challenge.
Once the model was built, students weighed their bridge and then attached it to a testing mechanism:
a bucket connected to a bolt inserted in a wood plank sitting on the road bed. Weights were slowly added to the bucket until the bridge eventually collapsed. The students determined the bridge efficiency, the mathematical ratio of the weight held by the bridge to its own weight. The greatest load a bridge held was 77 pounds.

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