(April 8, 2005) — “The bucket itself weighs two kilograms,” said Mr. Gerald Gruss after he carefully hung it from the bridge. Then one by one he placed the weights that weighed a kilogram each into the bucket. “Three kilograms…four kilograms…five kilograms…” said Mr. Gruss until the bridge collapsed and parts of it scattered across the table. It was the fourth annual 2005 Bridge Building Competition. Approximately thirty bridges participated in this year’s competition. Each student had to pay five dollars for the materials to build the bridge and received a copy of the rules that they must follow originally two weeks prior to the due date, February 14th. However, due to the budget cut, the Los Angeles schools decided to pull out from the national competition. Therefore, the regional competition was called off, and Clark had to withdraw itself from the national competition as well. As a result, the competition date was delayed to March 8th and 9th. Although it was unfortunate that there will be not be anyone entering the national competition this year, the extension helped many students because it gave them more time to brainstorm ideas and construct bridge. Constructing the bridge was a very tedious work. It played the main, yet the most difficult, part for the students. They each had to follow a set of official rules, which changes every year because each year the contest requires a different type of bridge. This year the bridges had to be “up and over.” Some rules included maximum mass of twenty-five grams, maximum length of forty centimeters, maximum height of twenty-five centimeters, maximum width of six centimeters, and a slot centered on the bridge that is minimum fifteen by one and two-tenths centimeters. Without abiding to the rules, the bridge was disqualified from the competition. Aside from the rules, students also had to figure out how to build a bridge that is symmetric, sturdy, and most importantly, efficient. Sophomore Sevan Davoodian said, “Making the legs straight and equal was very hard.” After designing their most ideal bridge, the students had to glue them together. “Gluing was the biggest problem because the drying took a long time,” said freshman Megan Vigilia. There was even a rule about gluing, which was that glue could be at most twenty percent of the mass. The whole process took an extensive amount of time. “There are people who spent hours and hours working on it,” said Mr. Gruss. Soon after, the bridges were all turned in, and the day of the competition arrived. One by one the students crowded around the back counter of room 4201. There on top of the back counter were two student desks thirty centimeters apart from each other. Underneath the gap between the two tables was a bucket to hold the weights and around it were the weights. Before the students tested the efficiency of their bridges, they were weighed and measured to check if they qualified or not. Even though about half of the bridges did not qualify, they were still tested. However, they were not able to place in first, second, or third place no matter how much it held. After the check-up, Mr. Gruss placed the plate with the loading rod at the center of the bridge. Then the bridge was placed on top of the two tables, and the rope connected to the bucket was hung on the hook, slowly allowing the bucket to hang there. Roughly a third of the bridges were destroyed, not able to hold even the weight of the bucket. “I think the biggest decision maker of the results was the weight of bridge,” said sophomore Nick Lee. “Then again, the bridge could not weigh too little or too much.” After all the bridges were tested and destroyed, the results came in. The first place went to freshman Angie Wang, who held nineteen kilograms, second was junior Aksel Martirosyan, third was sophomore Sevan Davoodian, and lastly, the Best Design went to senior Eduardo Castillo, who also placed fourth. “Although I didn’t get to place, I learned from my mistakes and had the chance to see others interesting and clever designs,” said freshman Nikiya Crisostomo.