Popsicle Arch Bridge
These are the photos of a popsicle bridge that I made for a bridge building contest at my university in Spain. The weight of the bridge was 3.9kg, and the bridge held 700kg without breaking. This gives it an efficiency score of 180. The dimensions of underneath the arc are 90cm x 45cm.
Popsicle Bridge #2
This popsicle bridge was made from 58 unmodified popsicle sticks. It was 25 inches long, 4 inches tall, and 3 inches wide. I used only Elmer’s white glue to build…
Popsicle Bridge Holds 500 lbs.
Hi, I just wanted to share the excitement…by using ideas from your website (recommended by my son’s Cub Scout leader) my son Jackson and I were able to build a Popsicle bridge with approximately 125 sticks. It set a new record by holding 500 lbs. for about 15 seconds before breaking! Thanks for the great ideas…not bad for the first try
Popsicle Stick Suspension Bridge
I have always wanted to build a model suspension bridge, and finally I have finished one. This is a popsicle stick suspension bridge. I created it from scratch, coming up with the design on my own. After testing it to failure I learned quite a bit about how suspension bridges react to loads. This model suspension bridge uses popsicle sticks as the main building material. The decking is cardboard, and the “cables” are 550 parachute cord (military surplus)
Prairie Popsicle Stick Bridge
This is a popsicle stick bridge I built while in the last few weeks of my fall college semester. I used 924 popsicle sticks to build this bridge. This bridge was 5 feet long, 10 inches tall, and 8 inches wide. I had to sort through 2600 popsicle sticks to find enough usable ones. The first testing of the bridge consisted of 220 pounds worth of weights. The second testing included putting a piece of plywood on top of the bridge and me standing on it (170 pounds). We noticed that one end diagonal chord was bending tremendously, so I decided to call off any more testing until I could repair that one piece
Science Olympiad Balsa Bridge
This balsa bridge was built by some students of mine for a Science Olympiad competition. It spanned 14 inches, weighed 8.1 grams, and held 29 pounds. That puts its efficiency at 1630.
Science Olympiad Tower
This tower was 24 inches tall, 6 inches wide at the base, tapering to a 1 & 1/2 inch square at the middle. This tower weighed 7.0 grams, and held…
Short Howe Truss Popsicle Bridge
I built this popsicle stick bridge to complete my short popsicle bridge series. This bridge uses the Howe Truss design. Previous to this I had built bridges using the Pratt and Warren trusses. This bridge was 13.5 inches long and used 50 popsicle sticks. It ended up holding 117 pounds before failing.
Short Pratt Truss Bridge
This is a popsicle stick bridge I built using the Pratt Truss design. This bridge is 13.5 inches long, 4 inches tall, and 3.75 inches wide. This bridge weighed about 70 grams and held 73 pounds before breaking. I used 46 popsicle sticks to build this bridge. That gives it an efficiency score of 474
Short Pratt Truss Bridge Updated
This is the updated design of my Short Pratt Truss Bridge made from popsicle sticks. The only difference was the addition of 4 more popsicle sticks in key areas. I doubled up the angled sticks on each end, and made the lateral bracing into an X shape rather than a zig-zag pattern
Short Warren Truss Popsicle Bridge
This popsicle stick bridge was made from 40, unmodified popsicle sticks. The bridge spanned 12 inches, was 4 inches tall and 3 inches wide. I used only Elmer’s white glue to build the bridge. It weighed 57.4 grams (0.13 pounds), and held 90 pounds. Its efficiency score was 712.
Spaghetti and Straw Bridge
We found that it holds 5lbs so far and potentialy more, considering our first bridge broke with a large ball of string as the weight and our second broke with a coke can. I think our success rate was pretty high
Straw Bridge
Bridge constructed with drinking straws & spaghetti. Pinned connections between straws with spaghetti. Bridge span across deck = 50cm, supported below at half span. Was skeptical about the bridge holding…
The Whooping Creek Bridge
The Whooping Creek Bridge was originally built in 1928 (According to here). Unfortunately, the bridge was closed in May of 2006 after a DOT inspection. 5 months later, no work…
Toothpick Arch Bridge
I just completed a new toothpick bridge that’s quite different than my last one. It’s an arch made from curved trusses, formed once again with toothpicks and wood glue. This one won’t be tested either (sorry!) because it was made for a friend who creates custom action figure dioramas. But I designed the bridge to have the highest ratio of maximum load to bridge weight and some ad hoc tests made me pretty optimistic
Toothpick Bridges
Many people come to Garretts Bridges looking for advice on building a toothpick bridge. And though I have thought much about it, I have not attempted to build one yet….
Toothpick Suspension Bridge
I just finished this bridge a few days ago after working on it on and off for 3 months. It’s a cable stayed bridge design made with standard round toothpicks and wood glue.
The bridge is 31 inches long and just under 20 inches tall. The main road truss is 2 inches by 2 inches, constructed of beams of laminated toothpicks.
Ultimate Popsicle Bridge Design?
This is quite an interesting popsicle bridge video. The maker claims it is the “ultimate popsicle bridge design” because it held 600 pounds. He also states in the description that he spent a large amount of time optimizing the Warren Truss. This is also probably part of his “ultimate design” claim…
Verrazano Narrows Bridge
I decided, for the 50th birthday of the Verrazano Bridge, to put together a model. I always loved the bridge; I lived in its shadow in Brooklyn for years and…
Video: Build A Model Bridge
This is the absolute best video I have seen about building model bridges. Roy Coleman, the founder of the International Bridge Building Contest, gives a very informative presentation in this video. The presentation is over an hour long. He shows how to build a bridge from scratch. He is gearing his video towards the…
World’s Longest Popsicle Stick Bridge
Here is the story of the Prairie Popsicle Stick Bridge told in video format. As far as I know, this is the longest working popsicle stick bridge that a person can walk across. If you know of a longer bridge that does the same, please let me know. The largest popsicle bridge was built back in 2008 in my dorm room at Prairie Bible College. For many nights I slept on the floor, as I was using my bed space as a worktable to glue the bridge together.