undergraduate

On April 9th DTU held the third “Building a Bridge Across the Milky Way” competition, attended by 250 students in 87 teams, with 66 from local high schools, including the Le Qui Don High School for the Gifted and Phan Chau Trinh High School. Using wooden chopsticks and glue, contestants had only three hours to design beautiful models of bridges that could carry heavy loads. 

 

 

 

Mr. Duong Minh Chau of the DTU Faculty of Civil Engineering said: The third “Building a Bridge Across the Milky Way” contest attracted more students than the second, with twenty new teams. It aroused student interest in design and construction. Students worked hard to create esthetically pleasing and practical model bridges. Although thread cannot be used to strengthen the bridges, the load efficiency index of the winning model increased this year. Students of Construction and Architecture, in particular, demonstrated their expertise by predicting load results and then designing high quality, efficient and esthetic model bridges. They quickly employed various alternative solutions to increase material use efficiency, such as designing arched main beams, using powder to increase truss joint hardness, dividing beams into small links, arranging force-bearing materials according to internal forces, and making structural drawings to save time, resulting in model bridges that could carry heavy loads well.”

 

To encourage the teams, prizes were presented to two groups, for senior high school students and for university students. 

The first prize for university students was won by the Pink Balloon team from the DTU K20XDC class. Second prize went to the DTU K20 CSU XDD AP team and the TNT_XDC team came third, with a consolation prize going to the S8 team from the DTU K22 XDC class.  

 

The first prize for high school students went to the NSH team and second to the CBNA5 teams, both from the Le Qui Don High School for the Gifted. Third prize was won by the Dream High team from the Phan Chau Trinh High school and two consolation prizes were awarded to the LQÐ-CT team from Le Qui Don High School for the Gifted and to the DLN team from Phan Chau Trinh.  The prize for the “Most Beautiful Bridge” was won by the D23 team from Phan Chau Trinh High school, the “Best Loading Capacity” prize went to the 11/6 team from Phan Chau Trinh and the “Best Forecast” prize to Le Qui Don High School for the Gifted. 

Nguyen Thi Truong Sinh, a 10th grade student at Le Qui Don High School for the Gifted, said: “We made three trial models at home out of bamboo and bodhi wood, but, by surprise, at the actual contest we had to work with pine, which was totally different. This worried us for a while, but we were able to build rather good model bridge. We were very happy to take part in the contest at DTU and win first prize. The contest challenged us to assemble a working team, formulate our ideas and turn them into reality. If DTU organizes this contest again next year, I will call on many other friends to take part. The contest is an important way for us to enjoy ourselves and encourages everyone to come up with ideas to build bridges that make our city more attractive and convenient.”