Springbank’s year 8 STEAM Bridges Expo was a wonderful success with students, staff and guests witness to a room of innovation, engineering and design.

The objective was to bring the knowledge acquired during the theory component of the challenge together to construct a bridge with straw and string that would carry a 1 kilogram weight across a 60 centimetre span.

The initial phase saw students testing the strength of a number of two and three dimensional shapes at ground level; some holding an impressive 4 kilogram load. The real investigation however was how their entire bridge design would stand up to the rigors of that invisible force that keeps us all planted firmly on the ground, ‘gravity’.

From beam and cantilever, to truss and tied arch design, our year 8 students confidently brought their ‘A’ game (and ‘A’ frames) to the table in the final examination of the STEAM challenge.

Ayesha stated “building our bridge knowing it would have to hold up to such a heavy weight was very challenging”.