Purpose

The purpose of the Engineering Encounters Bridge Design Contest is to provide middle school and high school students with a realistic, engaging introduction to engineering. We provide this contest as a service to education.

Goals

The contest will provide you with an opportunity to:

• Learn about engineering through a realistic, hands-on problem-solving experience.
• Learn about the engineering design process-the application of math, science, and technology to create devices and systems that meet human needs.
• Learn about truss bridges and how they work.
• Learn how engineers use the computer as a problem-solving tool.

We also hope you will have some fun pitting your problem-solving skills against those of other virtual bridge designers around the globe.