Event Details
Des Moines, IA
Science Center of Iowa
401 W. Martin Luther King Jr. Pkwy
Des Moines, IA, 50309
November 3, 2022 — November 4, 2022
Timeline each day:
9:00-9:30 am — Check-In / Setup
9:30-9:45 am — Opening
9:45 am-12:00 pm — Bridge Building
12:00-12:45 pm — Lunch* & Explore SCI
12:45-2:00 pm — Load Testing & Judging
2:00-2:30 pm — Explore SCI (Judges Deliberation)
2:30 pm — Awards for all categories
*Personal sized pizza is provided for lunch, or sack lunches can be brought if preferred. Each participant will also receive one bottle of water and snack during the bridge-building time.
Event Contact
Description
The Bridge Building Challenge sets teams against the clock, as they only have 2.5 hours to build a bridge out of provided materials (e.g., Popsicle sticks, wooden dowels, masking tape, glue, string, and poster board).
Throughout the competition, students have the opportunity to interact with engineering professionals from the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) and Iowa State University’s (ISU’s) Institute for Transportation (InTrans) to learn more about bridges and other transportation-related topics.
This annual event is sponsored by the Iowa DOT and supported by ISU 4U Promise, which helps prepare students for college who come from communities with historically lower attendance or academic success in higher education.