At Greeley West High School, the construction department put their engineering skills to the test in the first ever Spaghetti Bridge Engineering Challenge. Students were assigned to create constructed bridges using ONLY two materials; pasta and glue. They aimed to create structures that could withstand the heaviest weight load, and among the standout competitors was junior Jocelyn Zamora, who earned second place with an astonishing 22 pound pre fail load.
The challenge required students to design a bridge with a minimum 18 inch span, and could not use any more than two pounds of pasta and with a maximum of only 20% glue to pasta ratio. The competition heavily encouraged problem solving and applied engineering principles, which pushed the students to think very critically about the structure and weight distribution of their build.
Despite Zamora’s success, the construction process was not without its challenges.
“The most difficult part was putting the rubber bands on the spaghetti noodles because they would break very easily,” Zamora shared. “We were only able to use five or ten noodles, which sounded very difficult to do and they weren’t cooperating very well at first, but after some time, I got the hang of it and everything began to make sense.”
When asked about her strategy in applying glue, she admitted she relied solely on intuition rather than precise engineering calculations. “I was very precise with every noodle and glue I placed on my structure, it wasn’t going to be an easy competition, so I wanted to make sure every piece was put perfectly,”she said.
Her bridge performance exceeded her expectations. “Yes, I was actually really surprised,” Zamora shared. “I didn’t think it was going to hold up a lot of weight because the top of my bridge wasn’t flat, but in the end, it held up a lot of Gatorade bottles and batteries.”
Reflecting on her experience, she acknowledged that time constraints cut down her ability to refine her design. “I play basketball for Greeley West, so I didn’t really have a lot of time to put more effort into this project.” Zamora explained.
Beyond the competition, she took away a very important life lesson from this challenge. “I’ve learned to not procrastinate my time, I feel like I spent most of my time on this project constantly changing my strategy and not sticking to one single plan. In the future I will now stick to the first plan that comes to mind and just make minor adjustments instead of just scrapping and completely changing my plans over and over again.”
