Physics students take part in annual bridge contest

Kyle Altmann — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 21:00:00 +0000

Team “Overdressed and Outclassed” won the 2011 Physics Bridge Challenge, an annual Popsicle stick bridge-building competition hosted by the Physics Department and the Society of Physics Students.

Team members David Belyea, Carter Kozak and Matt Smith built a bridge that could support 30.4 kilograms, or almost 67 pounds.

Teams were asked to construct a bridge of at least 100 centimeters in length from 100 popsicle sticks for the event, which was held Tuesday, Nov. 15 in the McMichael Science Center. SPS members added weights and sand until the bridge collapsed. This year’s winning bridge fell just short of passing the all-time record of 31.4 kilograms set last year.

The second place bridge, “Murphy’s Law,” constructed by Andrew Loughran, Ian Milne and Sarah Zierhoffer held 12.8 kilograms. Lee Cantrell, Stewart Finney, Steven Lathrop and Dean Smalligan were team “DSLS,” and had the third place bridge which held 11.4 kilograms.

Images of the event, including high-speed camera movies of some bridges failing, are available at

Altmann publishes physics article

Kyle Altmann — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 20:59:00 +0000

The paper was the outcome of a trip the two made to the Synchrotron Radiation Center, a national lab in Wisconsin, when Norman was an Elon College Fellow and SURE student. The paper, titled “Local and nonlocal magnetic behavior of dilute manganese-doped nickel alloys,” used two different techniques to explore magnetic properties of samples with different combinations of nickel and manganese mixed together.

Citation:
K. R. Podolak, R. F. Willis, M. J. Wilson, P. E. Schiffer, T. A. Norman, and K. N. Altmann, Journal of Applied Physics, Vol.105, Issue 8.

To view the article, please click the link at the right.

Posts by Kyle Altmann | Today at Elon | 51������

Physics students take part in annual bridge contest

Altmann publishes physics article

Posts by Kyle Altmann | Today at Elon | 51��