Promoting a new generation of people passionate about engineering through a spaghetti bridge building competition

摘要

Education plays a major role in promoting the transversal skills of collaboration and creativity and in building a more sensitive general public able to appreciate the virtues of engineering design. Therefore, an important effort should be put on the development of educational experiences that enhance collaboration, creativity, and an appreciation for what is a sound structural design. Within this context, this paper presents an experience carried out at the Universitat Politècnica de València’s Science Week to develop the above mentioned skills. The experience involved students of several secondary schools in the construction and load test of reduced scale models of bridges built with spaghetti. The experience was presented as a challenge where the goal was to cross a pre-defined span with the highest possible efficiency. The paper provides the details of the design challenge (means required to carry out the competition, designs presented by the students, and results). It also shows how the experience was successful in terms of both, the skills developed by the students and the fostering of a passion for engineering.