University of Belize Students did the country proud last week when they bested 35 teams and won an engineering competition at the Instituto Tecnológico de Chetumal. Now UB has been participating in this event since 2010, and this is the very first victory. And how did the team of five Associates level students do it? Well, they had to figure out how to build a bridge to match the load bearing specifications set out by the event organizers. The event lasted three days, and in the end, their design won! Today they told us why their project stood it:..
Irvine Ruiz, Leader, - UB Team
"When we went to Chetumal, I needed to redesign the bridge because the dimension was different. It was one meter long by a height of 7.9 centimeter by width of 10.5. The idea behind this is that we used macaroni to build the bridge. We see here the efficiency and the most logical. We study engineering. So we compete against architecture civil and like my colleague said we are mechanical and electrical, so we don't study in depth with designing of bridge. We only cover some areas like framework and calculating the load side. So we sit together and plan more or less what our design will be about and then we build the bridge."
Courtney Weatherburne, 7News
"So it's pretty much you all created a design for a bridge or design a model of a bridge that could hold a maximum amount of weight right, in terms of cargo I guess crossing it?"
Irvine Ruiz, Leader, - UB Team
"Yes, so doing the calculation we expect more or less our bridge hold like 34 kilograms - more or less will be about 86 pounds the macaroni."
Leonard Mortis, Chair., UB Engineering Dept.
"Their projects stood out, because the second and third place winners, their models took more weight, but our little model took less weight, but it was more efficient, because of the weight - the less weight of or model. Very small, very nimble. We were surprised that it took 39 kilograms and so because their weight was so small compared to the load it took, we were able to best the other two teams and they were surprised. So when we got the news on Friday, we were elated."
The team took 12 hours to design the bridge, and for their effort, each won a computer tablet and five thousand pesos.
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