Natomas High engineering team wins $1,500 top prize in California Bridge Building Competition

--- Published on January 23rd 2018 ---
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Natomas High's winning entry in bridge-building contest

Winner and still champion – Natomas High School!

For the second year in a row, a three-person team of Nighthawk engineering students has won $1,500 for capturing top prize in the California Bridge Building Competition among teams of 11th- and 12th-graders.

Seniors Muhammad Matloob, Carlos Ortega and Andres Gomez teamed up to win this year’s bridge-building competition. Neither they nor their adviser this year, Bert Pinsky, participated in last year’s winning effort.

“They did us well,” Pinsky said of the Nighthawks’ blue-ribbon trio, adding that Muhammad, Carlos and Andres would hold their own in college engineering classes. “They’re definitely engineer-grade students.”

Engineering is a college and career pathway at Natomas High that is available to students from throughout the district. Its students have fared well, over the years, not only in bridge-building but in robotics and other engineering contests.

In the California Bridge Building Competition, the challenge for competing teams was to build a balsa wood suspension bridge that weighs little but can carry a lot of weight. Natomas High’s  entry was 20 inches long, weighed about an ounce, and proved capable of holding 27 pounds.

To qualify for the finals, the Nighthawk team had to use computer software to design their bridge, submit scaled design drawings and data tables, and explain scientific principles behind their design, challenges encountered, solutions reached, and lessons learned.

The contest is designed to be statewide in scope, but thus far, only teachers from the Sacramento and Los Angeles areas have received the necessary training, said Dan Kemether of Professional Engineers in California Government, which sponsors the contest.

Natomas High was among three teams chosen from their division, high school upperclassmen, to square off in Saturday’s finals at Sacramento State University before a panel of industry professionals. Teams were judged on computer drafting, oral presentation, and their bridge’s strength-to-weight ratio.

Pinsky said the Nighthawks team came well prepared for thinking on their feet as judges fired questions about their balsa wood entry. “I make them give presentations almost every week,” Pinsky said of his engineering stidents.

In creating their balsa wood suspension bridge, Muhammad, Carlos and Andres had to consider compression forces, tension forces, stress analysis and vector analysis, Pinsky said.

All three winning Nighthawks plan to attend college next year, but only one of them, Carlos, aspires to be an engineer. Muhammad hopes to be a neurosurgeon someday, and Andres has not yet decided on a career.

Muhammad said science always has fascinated him, whether it’s learning about a bridge or the human body. “The simplest things can be incredibly complex when you look at them through the eyes of science,” he said.

Muhammad, Carlos and Andres will bank $500 apiece from Saturday’s bridge-building victory.