Spaghetti Bridge Competition seeks out those with mettle

For the fourth consecutive year, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Ruhuna, held its Spaghetti Bridge Competition at the auditorium of the university.

This much-awaited competition amongst the 1st year students of the Faculty that took place recently not only had groups competing from the department but had, unlike other years, school groups as well taking part.  

The school groups by no means were the underdogs and posted a strong challenge to the very tutors who coached them on the nitty-gritty of the game.

The game, however, turned out to be more than a hands-on application of the principles of physics and effective bridge design; it was about understanding the properties of a material and maximizing its usage for a given cause. 

The cause spelt out in the competition was to construct a bridge across a fixed span with a given weight of spaghetti and glue.  The bridge design that has the highest ratio of bridge weight to pay load wins. 

The group who called themselves ‘Mighty Ruhuna’ of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering had its model notching a ratio of 62 % to be the winners of the 2016 competition that had a field of nearly 40, shall we say, spaghetti and glue renditions. 

University of Ruhuna also won the first and second places in Inter University Spaghetti Bridge Competition was attended by five universities Island-wide. The winning team built a spaghetti structure that held more than 44 kg of load. 

This time, too, LANWA, the pioneering steel brand that has optimised its own material usage for optimum strength over a span of 60 years, was the sponsor of the competition.   

In parallel to this program Ceylon Steel Corporation offered 10 scholarships for needy students to promote Civil and Environment Engineering conducted at the University of Ruhuna. 

Ceylon Steel Corporation had been doing this corporate social responsibility program since 2014. Under this scholarship program student are being paid a monthly allowance by Ceylon Steel Corporation under an initiative launched by its Chairman Nandana Lokuwithana.