> Why was it disqualified? Post a picture if possible.

The rules stated that you could use any type of pasta and either a hot glue gun or epoxy to hold the bridge together.

Non of us had any engineering ability so my suggestion was to use the spaghetti as the fiber in a fiber/epoxy matrix. I though that if we made two arches, tied them together at the top and had them just far enough apart to run a toy car on a lassagne road bed at the bottom, we should be able to make the weight requirement.

Our main problem was that one of the arches didn't harden. We started this project the night before the contest so we were under the gun the whole way. The second arch wasn't fully hardened either, but we didn't have much choice, I had already paid $1.00 to enter!

So we took the one arch and ran it from the road bed on one side of the bridge, up and over to the other side of the bridge and road bed. With only one arch we were way under the weight limit so we glued braces all over the place to stop the weight from twisting the one brace. Then we took this ugly contraption to the contest.

A really interesting thing was that the contest was held in the student union or The Pit as it was more commonly known, with about 1000 people in the room at all times. VERY HOT!! So, the arch cured as the contest progressed and as a result the bridge twisted more at 25 lbs. than it did 30 minutes later at 40 lbs.!

We originally took the bridge to the judges because the fiber/epoxy method wasn't mentioned in the rules. 3 judges thought it was fine and said that it was a great innovation and that the contest was about new ideas. The last judge said that he felt that we were using the epoxy as the structural strength of the bridge. Thinking fast and mostly not knowing what I was talking about, I said"I was under the impression that resin has no strength and only gets it from the fibers it binds together." The other judges said this is true and the rules don't say anything about using the epoxy as the structural strength anyway. So we were in!

When the first weight was applied and our bridge didn't break, the judge that originally ruled against us called another meeting and said although there was no rule against it, our design was not in the spirit of the competition and so we were disqualified. He later said to me that it was a engineering event and we had no business in it. He didn't realize that I had never intended to win and only wanted to try out an idea.

But, we got to have lots of fun, eat lots of free spaghetti, drink lots of beer and hang out with 150 or so nursing and dental assistance students. {:o)

Would have been really interesting if both of the arches had of cured on time! We were still way under the weight limit.

I don't have a scanner so I can't post the pictures. But I still have them and drag them out to have a good chuckle over every once in a while. One of the bridges that won was a work of art. (This guy flunked out as an engineering student!)

Ian