Elevated Bridge B/C

[Aia]

Absolutely awesome.

I took 7th place with my bridge- my efficiency was just 1.5pts away from taking a 6th place medal. Whatever- I'm so still so psyched to have presented my best efficiency at Nationals. Standing on stage with a light bridge holding the whole mass was amazing. If anyone was there in the 2pm hour, I was the tall girl screaming and jumping up and down, haha. Finally, the hard work paid off.

Going up for 3rd with Dynamic Planet was pretty cool too. I was definitely not expecting that- awesome.

Congrats to all the bridge winners. There were some beautiful and brilliant structures.

Did we have any other people on the forum test bridges? How did you do?

[nejanimb]

I'm exhausted, but I wanted to give a brief recap from our Bridge experience. The event was pretty well run (though our bridge was very nearly recorded as 70.9 grams instead of 7.09...), and everything was very smooth. It was great that we were able to really see other bridges well - you could get right up near the stage to see a lot of the intricacies of the bridges, which I thought was really neat. I was able to watch during the 12 o clock hour (teams 1-10) and the last hour, which meant I got to see all of the top three bridges! Both Kansas teams did an amazing job - congrats to both of you. It was validating for me to see that the design those two used was similar in general to ours, but the details and specifics were really really interesting. Troy's bridge, on the other hand, was really different. They were the only bridge I saw that loaded on tension (in this case, not on the top of the bridge), and the way they had it working was really neat. Congrats to Troy as well.

Even though the air in Georgia was practically wet, the insane amount of desiccants we used meant that our bridge only picked up 6 hundredths of a gram from home in PA. Even still, our score came out a bit lower than we might have hoped. We had hit 2,000 earlier in the year, put up 1915 at states, and nationals came out to 1788. Perhaps the humidity, perhaps some issue in materials of this particular bridge - who knows. Either way, it's hard to complain - came away with a very strong showing and a 4th place medal!

Special congrats to Aia before I cut this off - your bridge was awesome, and it was especially great to see you test. You certainly had the best reaction to results I saw from anyone during the day. =D.

[quickestwinne]

top one for C was about 2400 and top one for b was about 2100.

I have seen the top one for C. It's at my house. The one that got 2nd in B is also there-it got around 2000.

I'm guessing that you were the coach of those two teams. Congrats to the top bridges. Impressive scores from both divisions.

Actually, I'm not. My dad is the coach. My brother was the builder for the C bridge. I'm an older brother who also did science Olympiad and checks up on the site from time to time. Our family has been doing for about 7 years and has gotten 4 golds in the past 3 years in the tower/boomilever/ elavated bridge building event. Though I coach other events on the All Saints team (b team) and only help out minimally on elevated bridge from time to time. In fact now that Im back from college my room is where they building the bridges.

And I was mistakened about the B division bridge. I messed up a text. It was also around 2400.

[Aia]

Hey quickestwinne, I'm fairly sure I talked to your dad at the competition. We talked balsa engineering for a long time before I was summoned to another event. Can you tell him how the girl from WA did? I got 7th with 1517, holding whole weight at 9.89g.

Another special congrats to nejanimb. What a lovely bridge! ; ) I'm quite excited to hear what you guys can bring for (dare I say it already?) next year.

[quickestwinne]

Hey quickestwinne, I'm fairly sure I talked to your dad at the competition. We talked balsa engineering for a long time before I was summoned to another event. Can you tell him how the girl from WA did? I got 7th with 1517, holding whole weight at 9.89g.

Another special congrats to nejanimb. What a lovely bridge! ; ) I'm quite excited to hear what you guys can bring for (dare I say it already?) next year.

Yea, that's him. My dad got a kick out of you jumping around. He also said he wishes that his kids were about enthusiastic as you to build 40+ bridges and if you want to transfer to Kapaun Mt. Carmel anytime to build bridges for him, that would be great!(especially since my brother is graduating.)

[jazzy009]

Our bridge gained only a tenth of a gram so not too bad after all the precautions we took during the day. Unfortunately it broke prematurely so we didn't break 1000. We weren't expecting a medal but we did want to break 1000 (or in this bridge's case, 1100). Hopefully we'll be back next year, it was a lot of fun to see people that I've been talking to on the forum in real life! Nemjanib it was great to see you got a medal for that bridge!

[nejanimb]

Thanks everybody! And definitely another congrats to both Kansas teams. You guys turned in pretty dominating performances.

Bridges seems like it was fairly unforgiving. As we sort of predicted, top 8 was about a 1500 or so, and then after that, you'd drop down into the 20s with an 800. Seems to me this is where scores clustered - at about 700-900 range. I wonder what place the 1000 mark came at - that'd be very interesting to know. Congrats to everyone!

[dragonfly]

To be honest I am slightly disappointed with the fact that our bridge broke earlier than expected, but I'm still really pleased with how well we did. I was most worried at first that because our bridge had broken prematurely that we wouldn't even medal, which would've been upsetting seeing as how much effort and time our bridge team has put in this year. Nonetheless, I am completely satisfied with getting 4'th, and also admiring of the amazing/interesting bridges that Kansas and Troy put out. The feats that those schools accomplished were awesome, and it was cool that we were able to look relatively close and see some of the details in the designs. Also really cool getting to meet some of the bridge builders in person (Aia, awesome meeting you/testing your other bridge with you. Congratulations again!). Just overall a really great competition!

[gandhiji]

i was pretty disappointed with the way my bridge turned out: after getting close to 1900 in practice, our bridge broke much much earlier than we expected for only an efficiency of 1298 so i guess that means we can do better next year

[computernerd4826]

i got a 1536 efficiency, and 11th in Div. B
my best bridge had a 1700+ efficiency, but that was 2 bridges before nationals