the twig that sorta could

Just a quick (i hope) update about a contest i was in a little while ago. It was the Civil engineering popsicle stick bridge design contest. I, along with some friends entered this contest and did not bad. we were about 8th overall for total weight. we held something like 283 N(ewtons). that is about 63 pounds. 30ish kg. The winning bridge held something like 2000 N (450 lbs). I was increadibly impressed. and these are bridgers 2 feet long, by 6 inches by 6inches. 100 popsicle sticks and white glue (bought at Michaels). So ya a pic of the bridge is above, if you want to see the real version, its in my living room. how it broke you ask? well compression buckling. And in our defence, we just learned about that in the past week, (the contest was like 2 or 3 weeks ago). did you know that if you add a support at half the height of the beam, you increase its buckling strength by 4 times. that is you can put 4 times more stress on it before it will buckle. that woulda been nice.
Ian