Remember a little while back, I told you about Marley not making the pre-team for gymnastics? If she would have made it, it would have taken her off the usual progression…beginner, experienced beginner, intermediate, and then advanced. Well, she found out this past Tuesday that her coach is moving her up to the advanced class! She was thrilled!! I love it that God saw fit to deny pre-team, only to reward her shortly after with this. It means 2 hours per week, rather than 1, but is MUCH less time-consuming than pre-team would have been. Way to go, Marley!!
This is Abbey, looking both excited and extremely nervous. Why, you ask? We belong to a homeschool co-op, which meets every Friday. Co-op means that classes are taught to our 200+ children BY the parents, with the exception of a few paid teachers for certain classes. One of Abbey’s classes is Basic Engineering, and she has loved it. A recent project was to build a bridge out of popsicle sticks and wood glue. There were certain requirements, such as height, width, and type of stick used and those bridges that qualified were tested to see how much weight they could hold. Last years top weight was 300 pounds. Yowza.
Here are the bridges…Abbey’s is 2nd from the left.
Here is the set-up for weight testing…the bridge is put across a 12″x6″ hole cut-out of the wood plank above, a piece of wood is placed on top, and the weight is suspended below by cables. This is her teacher, an engineer husband of one of our group moms (Hi, Amy!). This is Abbey’s bridge, with the 1st two weights put on. He would place a weight, let the jack down to allow the weight to hang, and then count to 5. If the bridge held, he’d slowly add more weight, about 5-10lbs at a time.
I know the suspense is killing you, so I’ll jump ahead.
This is her bridge, right before it broke. He had run out of room to put weights on the platform under the bridge, so he had to start stacking them directly on top. Guess how much weight her popsicle bridge held? 553lbs. Yes, that’s five HUNDRED! The crowd was going wild! lol…
A close up…the bridge basically exploded on that one end and sent the weights on top sliding onto the floor. We were astounded that it held that much weight. After doing popsicle bridge research on the internet, Abbey decided on what type of design she wanted and Randy and Abbey both worked hard putting it all together, sanding, gluing, clamping, etc. One of the boys in the competition was overheard saying “No matter what, I’m beat by a girl”. Hee hee… Abbey was positively beaming.
So, the moral of this post is basically…girls rule. :)
