The bridge building competition was an extraordinary event and my students really enjoyed participating in the event. The competition enabled my students to understand the real life application of science and mathematics. Just recently I attended a teacher's workshop on "failure is not an option", and according to the presenter in the year 2010 roughly 90% of the world's engineers will be in Asia. This does not bold well for our country, because it shows that there is a serious decline in science and mathematics in Canada. Your event can help address this serious issue and hopefully rekindle a spirit and a rebirth for science and mathematics among the youth in our country. If this issue is not addressed it will no doubt hurt Canada's standing in the international community and undermine our ability as a nation to progress, especially in the areas of innovation which is the backbone of future economic growth.

The event itself was well organized, well planned and well implemented. My congratulations to you and your volunteers for hosting an outstanding event. The Judges were fair and impartial and even the destructive load test was fair and impartial. The only suggestion that I have is perhaps to limit the number of teams competing. As it currently stands there is no limit to the amount of teams a school can enter. This I believe gives a unfair advantage to the more affluent schools and relegates the inner city schools from competing. Many inner city schools were unable to compete in the competition because other schools especially more affluent ones were entering so many teams.

Once again, I salute your efforts to promote engineering among the youth of this country. Keep up the excellent work!

The competition was very well organized. It was a great learning experience for me and my students. It is a very unique opportunity. I am glad we participated. The parents that came were very impressed & spoke highly of the organization & of the amount of learning that was taking place. A huge success. It was such an exciting experience all the time, there wasn't any time that I found boring. Thank you to all those who organized this.
 I really liked:

• how the judges/ volunteers were giving specific ideas and suggestions for improvement to the student designs. That made such a big difference. It is a big step in the learning process, if they were to repeat it how would they do it differently.
• how the performance ratios of all bridges were shown on the screens.
• the brochures/ booklet and program
• the certificates of participation were absolutely fantastic.
• the big screen that showed the load testing machine all the time.

Thank you for an excellent and very well organized competition.

It was extremely professional and the students had a fantastic experience.

Thank you for organizing an event that gets better and better each year!

My students are already thinking of new ideas for next year.
One of my students went home and built a bridge!

Again, a great day. My students really enjoyed it. Thank you for all the hard work and time.

I would like to congratulate you and your entire team of volunteers for a job well done. All the events of the day were well organized and enjoyable for teachers, parents and of course the students. It is an event that I'm sure has inspired two of my students to seriously consider engineering as a profession. I was interviewed by CITY PULSE and appeared on the 6:00 PM news. I mentioned that education is about learning and having fun and you have certainly achieved both these goals with this event. Thanks for offering this amazing FREE opportunity to all students.

After receiving the information about the bridge building competition (BBC) I met with interested colleagues and we decided that my grade 5 class, the grade 6/7 class, and six grade 3 students would enter the event. The students were enthusiastic since this was the first time that Sacred Heart, a typical school in the centre of the Malvern community, was taking part in this engineering competition. Teachers were responsible for registering their teams and teaching their own students about bridges. The grade 3 students were invited to work under my supervision in the grade 5 "construction site" while the older grade 6/7 students worked autonomously in their own classroom.

The event will see a natural increase in the total number of teams as the competition has grown in popularity and teams were now restricted to a maximum of only three members. To promote teamwork we consciously made full teams and avoided two-person teams unless class size dictated otherwise. I assigned project managers who in turn picked their own crew and each member was expected to contribute equally in the design and construction. Project managers were given the task of ensuring that their teams met our construction deadline of Thursday, March 2nd. This left one day for final inspection and modifications to ensure that all bridges were built to design specifications.

As the list of teams was posted on the BBC website it was exciting to see so many teams. At the same time I was surprised to notice that there was a waiting list with the schools that submitted their teams later than the other schools. We told our students we were fortunate that we entered early enough so our bridges would be tested. At the same time they were reminded that although it was a fun activity they were expected to give their best effort and any team not meeting this expectation risked being pulled out of the competition. I am certain that the organizers wanted to include every team. However, the primary factor determining the total number of teams was the fire safety code regulations, which specifies the maximum occupancy permitted in the Council Chamber. There was the initial uncertainty as to which schools would be interested and the number of teams submitted. Thus the only fair and logical solution at the time would be to accept teams on a first come, first serve basis. Judging from the overwhelming response, I anticipate that next year's competition will be even bigger and perhaps another venue may have to be selected to accommodate everyone.

Most materials like Popsicle sticks, white glue, construction paper, measuring scales, and metre sticks are standard items in school inventories. Sandpaper and saws were purchased by teachers and my students purchased their own dollar store Popsicle sticks. Considering that all construction took place at school, there was insufficient build-time during regular classes so I remained in class during all my non-duty recesses to supervise my students. I was exhausted and it was a challenge to keep some teams on track. My colleague faced similar difficulties and ultimately had to withdraw one team. Nonetheless, it was easy to foster an atmosphere of friendly competition between divisions and among individual teams. Prior to the competition, several students stayed home for days due to illness and a few teams were left with just one person. My students worked hard and I am extremely proud of them.

The day of the competition was one of fun and excitement. There were so many people and so many different bridges. The destructive testing was the most exhilarating part for my students as they would finally know how their bridges performed. They also got the added thrill of seeing themselves in the newspaper and on television. Thank you to all the organizers and volunteers for hosting this fantastic event which will remain a memorable learning experience for my students and a rewarding experience for me.

The Bridge Building Contest of 2006, hosted by the Professional Engineers of Ontario, was an excellent opportunity for science students in the elementary grades. Through this event, we were able to revise the theories we have learnt about structures. More importantly, we gained an opportunity to apply our knowledge to real life as we worked through our design process, as well as during fabrication. 

It is true, however, that our school, Henry Hudson S.P.S, was at a disadvantage during the contest. This is because of two reasons. First and worst, the "expectations" outlined were not clear and so, we misinterpreted them, giving way to many errors. Secondly, this was, unlike the other schools, our first year participating in this Contest.

Nevertheless, the event provided me with the chance of viewing other students’ designs to see the strengths and weaknesses of construction. As we "oohed" and "aahed" through the destruction of each bridge, we begin to understand how the testing worked, why it was not always accurate, and what really made one structure ten times stronger than other (which I found to be mainly, the size of trusses).

Through these observations, I realized that the bridge my partner and I created, Bridge Tiara, was a purposeful one. Not only was it strong due to the trusses supporting various parts of the bridge, it also had a very, very small mass as compared to the mass of the bridges of my peers. 

This brings us to the point - what was the error? First of all, the length of our bridge met the minimum expectations, and fit exactly on the two ends of the testing machine. But when the force was applied, the bridge lost its balance. It slipped because of the disruption and fell (unharmed) right through the center! In addition, when we tried to follow the expectation: "provision must be made to allow loading plate..." we misunderstood it. Instead of allowing a volunteer to drill through our bridge, we had already made a big rectangular hole in the center of our bridge! It made the "loading process" much harder (my apologies to the volunteers for this).

To conclude, I must say that I have learnt a lot of things by merely being a competitor in this contest. It is amazing how we fail to appreciate engineers, who work hard all around the world to provide us with products and services that have become a necessity in our daily life. The contest has made me realize that students need to become more involved in this world of engineering, and the Bridge Building Contest is an excellent first step to becoming part of this global community.

The Scarborough Chapter 2006 Bridge Building Competition was a great success. It was a wonderful opportunity to learn about the best bridge designs, what engineers are and how they build things. I believe that there is not enough science taught, and the competition was a good place to learn. It helped me to apply my best effort to science.

There were many schools and teams that were competing. This allowed me to meet new people and new friends and see how other students built their bridge. I saw many different designs and discovered many different ways to improve on our bridge. First of all, we didn’t need the abutments at all. We needed to put in more trusses in our bridge design. When load is applied to a bridge that has a lot of trusses (truss bridge) then the load gets divided equally so each beam shares an equal portion of the load.

I also learned what an engineer goes through everyday. Engineers find ways to improve on our everyday life. They must have a great amount of patience because when they are planning out the design of the bridge, they realize that some things won’t work out properly, therefore they must change it. Some time’s it’s a mathematical error, but even so, sometimes it’s all trial and error.

When I look around, I see many things that have been built by engineers, let it be a chemical engineer or an electrical engineer, because they are all here for the same reason, to help make our tasks easier. They have put a lot of thinking and effort to build some remarkable things.

Our science teacher, Mrs. Abdel Nour, was behind every one of us every step of the way. She gave us ideas on how we each could change or alter our bridges to improve on the design, hence making the bridge stand longer. My parents also supported our team’s project a lot by giving us some ideas to improve on our original design.

Overall, the Scarborough Chapter 2006 Bridge Building Competition was a chance to learn and discover new ways to make the world a better place to be.

Wow! What an amazing competition and idea. When my teacher told me about this competition, I was so elated and excited because last year, I made a suspension bridge using 200 matches for my Science Fair Project and now, I have another chance to construct a bridge. This was how I felt when Mr. Sacco told me about this competition. Amanda, Giulia, and myself were in the same group. So we made our GAS Bridge at the school. Mr. Sacco and Mr. Viera, who teach us science, offered us some ideas for example; use a clip when we put Popsicle sticks together. Throughout this competition I learned how important it is to work as a team. I also learned many scientific principles that are required in bridge building. We had to make our bridge using a certain amount of popsicles, but at same time it had to be strong and able to withstand a certain amount of force. Also, to make the bridge strong, make trusses (triangles) shapes; then it will support the bridge very well. I liked the way the judges interviewed us and we could see our competitor’s bridge on the screen and their scores. When the judges were interviewing us, City TV also interviewed us at the same time so we were on the news that day. Next year, I would like to participate again, but I’m going to high school. So my brother will participate next year. I learned about engineers that they give us so many ideas in our lives. I think they are creative people who make things work and who get things done. One day in my future, I want to become an engineer. This competition gave me so many ideas and reminded me how engineering is important in daily lives.

Janelle and I experienced how hard it was to make a bridge. When we heard about the competition we were really happy to start the bridge.
We made a bridge called the JK’s Pokemon Saphire Bridge. It took a long time. We had to do lots of rebuilding and we even had to do our deck over, imagine that!
Janelle did some parts and I did some other parts. We got to use tools like clamps and saws. It took a lot of teamwork and we had to help each other to make our bridge. Our parents did not help because we built our bridge in class. Sometimes we had to miss gym, art, math and language classes. Our teacher helped us by giving us materials and inspecting our bridge. We learned that the triangle is the strongest shape to use.
Once we got to the competition we got excited. We liked watching our bridge get destroyed, it looked awesome. Our bridge ended up great! Even if it took a long time, we had the best time ever. We would like to compete in next year’s competition. We mean it!

During the month of February we started building bridges. We came up with the name DKS Angel’z for our bridge from the first initial of our names. Our group came up with the design by going on the Internet and researching about bridges during computer class and we found the one we really liked.
Our experience of making bridges was really fun and exciting. We got to use different tools and materials to build our bridge. The easiest part of building our bridge was cutting the Popsicle sticks with the saw and gluing the sticks together. The hardest part was building the deck and the trusses. We got the help of our teacher when we were in need of smoothing out our beams and using the sharp tools.
We would like to compete in next year’s competition because it was a great experience and it was really fun. All of our hard work paid off and our bridge came in seventh place.

The day our teacher, Mr. Lam, announced that the class was entering a bridge building competition, everyone began whining and groaning thinking that it would be too much work.
We chose our group members and we are Andrea, Stephanie and Rashmi. We realized that it was more fun than we expected. We fought and fought over what the name of our bridge should be, but in the end, it turned out to be Rainbow Road.
We worked very hard on our bridge, sometimes missing gym and computer classes and recesses. March 4th was the day of our bridge competition and unfortunately, Rashmi, our project manager was unable to attend. Even so, Andrea and Stephanie were able to attend.
Then, a little while later, they began to test everyone’s bridges. We had to wait a long time before they finally began to test our bridge. After the testing of our bridge was over, our parents were clapping and cheering, supporting us all the way. To our surprise our bridge did very well and we came in sixth place in the junior performance category.
After the bridge competition was over we were happy that our teacher had signed us up for the competition in the first place and we would like very much to enter the bridge competition again next year.

It was hard working with the group because some people can get really distracted. We had lots of trouble with the gluing because when the glue dried we had some crooked pieces. We did not co-operate too much and that’s why we came in 17th and if we had co-operated we could have done better.
The competition was great and we had so much fun. We were scared a little bit when they were breaking our bridge. The good part is that Mary Jo and Natasha got to take the bridge back home. We had fun making the pieces and building the 3 Krystals Bridge and we are looking forward for next year’s competition.

Hello, our names are Kristian, Mearah and Jed and we are the builders of the Mushroom Bridge. We learned about the life of being engineers and we learned many things from this year’s bridge building competition.
Kristian liked to weigh the bridge while building, Mearah liked to glue all the pieces together and Jed, well, he was the leader and he liked bossing us around. At the competition we came in eighth place in performance. We all tried our best and we had fun together.

Hi, the name of our bridge is the Domination Bridge. We worked hard as we spent most of our recesses for about four weeks making our bridge. It was fun cutting the sticks with the saw because we never did this before. We worked together and we learned how to make our bridge stronger. Our teacher helped us by showing us bridge videos and teaching us about bridge building. Also, working with each other was fun too.