Engineering: Building Bridges

In the Spring term, before we broke up for the Easter holiday, a group of Upper Sixth students met for an hour and a half each Friday afternoon to take part in an engineering project.

Working in pairs, their tasks were to build a variety of bridges: arch, cantilever, suspension and more out of a range of materials. Each bridge was judged on the criteria of load supported, gap spanned, weight of the bridge itself and weight of materials used, the last two being negative factors in calculating the figure of merit.

After six weeks, members of the leading team became the captains of two teams (of the whole group) with one final task: to build a bridge out of paper, string and Sellotape to span a distance of 1.2 metres.

An Old Haberdasher engineer visited to offer advice to the participants. On the final week, the course leader then tested each bridge by attempting to cross the Water Gardens without getting wet. Unfortunately, one of the three weeks dedicated to this project was lost, as the School was closed by excessive snow. In compensation, the teams were allowed to lower one pier into the water. Well done to our budding engineers!

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