Commack High student Jacqueline Seifert wins Brookhaven National Laboratory bridge building competition

A Commack High School student has won first place in a bridge building competition coordinated by Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Jacqueline Seifert, a senior, took the top spot in the annual competition, which challenges youth to use physics and engineering principles to build basswood structures that are then tested to see how much weight they can support. This year's competition received a total of 142 entries.

Seifert, who placed second last year, designed a bridge that weighed 23.47 grams and recorded an efficiency of 1342.22. Efficiency is calculated using the mass of the bridge and the amount of weight it can support before breaking or bending more than one inch.

"The most exciting part was the experimentation and seeing what works and what doesn't, finding the weak points in my bridge so I could continue to make it better," Seifert said.

The second-place winner was Katherine Liang, a junior at Ward Melville High School in East Setauket, who won the two previous contests. Third place went to Jonathan Thomas, a junior at Walt Whitman High School in Huntington Station, while Smithtown High School East junior Aidan Quinn won this year's Aesthetic Award.

"This competition is an introduction to the world of engineering," said Scott Bronson, manager for K–12 programs at the lab's Office of Educational Programs. "We hope this contest inspires students to explore paths in science, technology, math, and engineering and to return to the lab as interns and future employees."

— MICHAEL R. EBERT

By Michael R. Ebert

michael.ebert@newsday.com

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.