Way to Go! Ward Melville student wins model bridge contest
Jessica Liao, a junior at Ward Melville High School in East Setauket, took the top spot in this year's Model Bridge Building Contest at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory
A student from Ward Melville High School in East Setauket has taken the top spot in a local contest that asked students to design and construct model bridges.
Jessica Liao, a junior, won first place in this year's Model Bridge Building Contest at Brookhaven National Laboratory, which included 190 model bridges created by students across Long Island. Lab engineers ran tests on the bridges and broadcast them virtually for the first time this year because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Liao was selected as the winner based on her bridge's efficiency, which is calculated using the bridge's weight and the weight the bridge can hold before breaking or bending more than one inch. Her bridge weighed 17.25 grams (grams being the unit of measure specified in the international rules) and supported 59.44 pounds
for an efficiency of 1,562.98.
Second place went to Aidan Wallace, a junior at Walt Whitman High School in Huntington Station, whose bridge weighed 17.54 grams and held 51.01 pounds for an efficiency of 1,319.14.
Sophia Borovikova, a senior at Northport High School, won the aesthetic award for the best-looking bridge.
Liao and Wallace were eligible to compete May 9 in Chicago at the International Bridge Building Contest, which was canceled because of the coronavirus. Instead, contest officials invited participants to mail their bridges to them for testing that will be conducted this summer.
Aidan Wallace, a junior at Ward Melville High School in East Setauket, placed second in this year's Model Bridge Building Contest at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory
— MICHAEL R. EBERT
Michael R. Ebert is an education researcher and has worked for Newsday in various capacities since 2003. He was part of an 11-person team named as 2008 Pulitzer Prize finalists for investigative coverage of the LIRR's platform safety issues.
