A group of students at Hampton High School recently captured honors during the University of Tennessee’s Engineering Day Competition.
For the second year in a row, Hampton students captured both first and second place in the Balsa Wood Bridge Competition.
In that event, students must construct a bridge structure out of Balsa wood and the bridge’s strength is then tested through a hydraulic press to see how much weight the bridge can withstand.
“The scoring ration was how much the bridge weighed versus how much it held,” said HHS senior Philip Arrington, who captured top honors in the event again this year. “I’ve competed for the past two years and I’ve won first place both times. Last year I had a teammate and this year I competed by myself.”
This year’s bridge design was very similar to his winning entry from last year, Arrington said, adding he designed in some additional structural supports this year.
“It held 40 pounds and weighed 19.4 grams (0.68 ounces),” Arrington said.
Arrington’s classmates —HHS juniors Cody Vines and Trevor Eller — captured second place in the event this year. Their bridge weighed in at 22.7 grams, around 0.8 ounces, and held 33.8 pounds.
“It’s really similar to Philip’s with the triangle structure and supports,” Vines said.
This year marked Vines’ first trip to the UT Engineering Day Competition and Eller’s second.
“I competed in the Newspaper Tower Competition last year but this is my first year competing in the Balsa Wood Bridge,” Eller said.
Prior to the competition in Knoxville, the three students worked on various designs and support structures for their bridges.
“We kept testing them and rebuilding them trying to get them to hold more and weigh less,” Arrington said, adding he, Vines and Eller spent a lot of time after school working toward the competition.
In addition to the Balsa Wood Bridge Competition, Vines also captured honors in the Penny Boat Competition with his partner, fellow HHS junior Harley Hill.
The pair earned third place with their crafted boat. In the competition, the students had to construct a boat out of tin foil and then test to see how many pennies it could hold and still remain afloat.
Hill and Vines faced an unexpected challenge when they arrived at the competition. The rules for the event were different than they had previously been told and prepared for. Not only did the size of tin foil sheeting they could use to craft their boat change, Hill said the students had to fill the boat with pennies before placing it in the water when they had previously been told they could place the boat in the water and then add the pennies one at a time. This change meant the students had to estimate the number of pennies their boat could hold without sinking. Once the boat was in the water they could not add or take away pennies, she said.
In the end, the boat crafted by Hill and Vines held 46 pennies.
“If we had put one more in there it probably would have sunk,” Vines said.
The trick to crafting the boat, Hill said, was trying to maximize the surface area while having sufficient walls.
“We made the bottom circular because corners would sink easier,” she explained. “We had to balance our sides with the surface area because otherwise water would have gotten in and it would have sunk.”
The students are all part of the Career Technical Education class on design and engineering at Hampton High School taught by Daniel Arnett, who praised the work of his students.
“They put in so many hours of work and the results show it,” Arnett said.
The students put in lots of extra time after school to work on their competition entries, sometimes staying until 9 or 10 p.m., Arnett said.