Hard work - and a lot of practice - paid off for the Georgia Tech Steel Bridge Team, which took home second place in the ASCE/AISC regional competition, held at the University of South Carolina, April 4-6.
The team's stellar showing won Georgia Tech a place in the ASCE/AISC National Steel Bridge Competition, to be held in Seattle, Washington May 29-June 1.
"We missed placing first by just a hair," said Kyle Manweiler, co-captain, along with Adam Karebenli, of the Georgia Tech Steel Bridge Team.
"We had a couple of freak accidents that took away some points, but we placed in every category and were one of the most professional teams, overall."
Check out the video of the Steel Bridge Team that Karebenli shot.
Georgia Tech's other entry in the ASCE's regional engineering competition - the Concrete Canoe - placed third in the Oral Presentation category and produced one of the lightest canoes in the field. Unfortunately, those qualities did not win the team a berth in the upcoming national competition in Illinois.
But don't look for gloom from the Concrete Canoe team. Like successful engineers the world over, the Georgia Tech team gained some valuable perspective by analyzing their failures.
"The canoe was light, it floated right away, and it didn't crack," said Co-captain Christopher Kiser. "Those are all good things, but we didn't put enough time into rowing practice, so we didn't do well in our [canoe] races."
Kiser is already looking ahead to next year.
"We'll probably replace the wooden form [used to mold the canoe's shape] with a styrofoam one, and we'll definitely replace the shale aggregate with more microspheres to make it lighter," he said. "And, yes - we'll practice our rowing."
Check out Kiser's video of his team's work.