GREENVILLE — This year’s project for the Engineering Tech Prep classes at Greenville High School saw students building gantry frames with floating platforms that were subjected to weighted loading to determine the efficiency of the models based on weight held divided by weight of structure in the balsa wood frame competition in honor of Engineer’s Week.
“Like last year, the structures were on platforms that floated in a pool of water,” said Jerry McClannan, principal engineer of Mote & Associates Inc., which helps out each year. “The new twist this year is that two platforms and two pools of water were involved.”
The 12th annual event took place this past Friday.
Winning the competition was the team comprised of Brandon Leigeber, Foster Cole and Chris Elliott with a 10,070 percent efficiency.
Second place went to Andrew Bonfiglio, Josh Galloway and Dennis Forte with 680 percent effiency.
Recipients of third-place certificates were Morgan Gilbert and McKenzi Glancy with 666.67 percent efficiency.
All of the winners were seniors.
Juniors also participated in the competition.
“Was this a good challenge,” adviser Chris Sykes asked the students, and most of them said it was.
Twelve of the original 16 structures made it to weigh-in.
The winning entry is declared by hooking up a bucket to the structure and filling it with sand to see how much it will hold until the structure comes apart.
Also featured during the event was the annual signing of the proclamation declaring the week of Feb. 16-22 as National Engineering Week. Greenville Mayor Steve Willman proclaimed the special week, as did Mike Bowers, former Greenville mayor and now economic development director, who was in attendance on behalf of that office with Melanie Nealeigh.
Forty-nine juniors and seniors competed in the contest.
Adviser Adam Eberwein assisted hooked up the bucket to each of the structures, poured the sand in and weighed them afterwards. Sykes handled scoring.
There from the engineers’s office with McClannan were Dave Mathews and Cory Bremigan.
