Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Mar 13/02) - If someone took these kids down to Fort Providence, gave them an unlimited supply of Elmer's safety glue and tongue depressors, Northerners might never have to worry about missing another ferry.

The kids in question were 15 student teams from across the NWT.

Their objective--build a bridge using nothing but popsicle sticks and glue.

As for the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists, and Geophysicists of the NWT and Nunavut (NAPEGG), their objective was to see how much punishment the bridges could withstand.

NAPEGG hosted the competition at Centre Square Mall Saturday to celebrate Engineering Week.

"We try to make it fun for kids," said NAPEGG chair Delia Chesworth.

Part of the fun involves mounting the popsicle bridges between two tables and hanging a platform from the bridge.

Weights are then placed on the bridges.

While many bridges snapped like, well, popsicle sticks, one bridge left the assembled engineers scratching their heads.

Truss Master 1000 + 2, entered by Daniel Jones and Joseph Tobac of Fort Good Hope, did not want to break.

After the engineers ran out of weights, City of Yellowknife public works manager Dennis Kefalas, no stranger to these pages, stood on the platform.

Nothing.

"It's a beast," grinned Kefalas. "They should have called it Big Bertha."

A colleague then stood across from Kefalas on the platform.

Even with all that weight, the bridge still held.

Something had to give.

Unfortunately, it wasn't the bridge.

The competition was halted briefly as the legs began buckling on the tables holding up the students' constructions.

In the end, Truss Master 1000 + 2 buckled (but did not break) under a weight of 337.5 kilograms.

Afterwards, an amazed-looking Kefalas, paid the ultimate tribute to the Fort Good Hope entry.

"It's a great design. They were really thinking about what they were doing," he said.

Tragically, Truss Master 1000 + 2 only received an honourable mention. The winning entry was based on a formula involving the breaking point of the bridge compared with the weight of the materials.

Tipping the scales at more than one kilogram, Truss Master 1000 + 2 was a Sherman Tank compared with the Honda-sized winning entry from William McDonald School.