Lumby brothers have a talent for building spaghetti bridges
Justin Dessert was elated to win, and beat his older brother, all in one fell swoop
Dessert, 15, was tops in the heavyweight division of the 35th annual spaghetti bridge competition Friday at Okanagan College’s Kelowna campus over his brother, James, 17.
“Ya, it feels good,” said a smirking Dessert.
His older brother, and second-place finisher, was gracious in defeat.
“We used the same design, but he won,” said James.
However, James couldn’t resist adding: “I did help him a bit with his bridge, too, you know.”
The younger Dessert teamed up with friend and fellow 15-year-old Grade 9 student from Charles Bloom Secondary School in Lumby, Hanya Riddick, for the heavyweight victory.
Their classic span-and-spokes design of glued together dried tube-pasta, spaghetti and lasagna noodles weighed just 784.4 grams, but held a weight of 223.61 kilograms before collapsing.
It’s the second win for Dessert and Riddick, who also claimed last year’s heavyweight crown with a similarly designed 995-gram bridge that supported 255 kg.
“We tinkered with it a little this year to make the bridge lighter in order to see if it could still be as strong,” said Dessert.
“It didn’t hold as much weight, but it still performed very well. We’ll be back next year with a slightly altered design to see what happens.”
Along with bragging rights, gold medals and knowing they are young engineering phenoms, Dessert and Riddick also won $1,500.
Neither knows what they’ll spend their cut of the cash on. Last year, Dessert bought a bike and Riddick doesn’t recall where the money went.
Building bridges out of spaghetti may seem silly, but that’s the point.
It’s a novel way for high school and postsecondary school students to apply their learning and flex their engineering prowess.
Ironically, neither Dessert or Riddick sees engineering in their future. Dessert wants to be a teacher and Riddick, a doctor. Besides the younger Dessert team and the older brother, there was only one other competitor in the heavyweight division.
Each of the three entries arrived at the college’s lecture theatre with their bridges already built of dried noodles and glue.
Dessert and Riddick estimated they spent 75 hours building their bridge over a month.
In the lightweight competition, six teams arrived at the college with their own designs and raw material and were given two hours to build a small bridge with a span of 50 centimetres or less.
“We kind of came up with the design on the fly and just used basic spaghetti noodles and a hot-glue gun,” said winner John Navratil, who also had Josh Richardson, Evan Geck and Matt Dreger on his team.
They are all second-year civil engineering students at the college.
Of six teams in the lightweight division, their bridge was the only one to withstand a one kilogram load for one minute. All the rest collapsed or exploded.
Heavyweight First — Justin Dessert and Hanya Riddick (Charles Bloom Secondary, Lumby) Bridge weighed 784.4 grams Bridge held 223.61 kg Second — James Dessert (Charles Bloom Secondary) Bridge weighed 888.7 grams Bridge held 159.39 kg Third — Keyvan Khadem, Gavin Saini, Ahmed Ramadan, Harvey Mann, Jordan L Okanagan College Bridge weighed 999.2 grams Bridge held 36.48 kg
Secondary First — Julia Dessert (Charles Bloom Secondary) Second — Tommy Bland, Jake Erbo (Eagle River Secondary, Sicamous) Third — Emily Gordon (Eagle River Secondary) Fourth — Hunter Martin, Bryce Mayer (Eagle River Secondary)
Fifth — Thomas Tune, Alyssia Phommakaskione, Paxton Watson (Eagle River Secondary)
Secondary Team Building First — Sarah Congdon, Ashley Koop (King’s Christian School, Salmon Arm)
Second — Rudi Fink, Joel de Hoog (King’s Christian School)
Third — Jacob DeWitt, Brenton Huntington, Tyson Kamstra (King’s Christian School)
Post-Secondary Team Building First — Josh Richardson, Matt Dreger, John Navratil, Evan Geck (Okanagan College)