Almost three dozen Johns Hopkins Engineering students learned about the power of pasta this month by assembling bridges made solely by gluing strands of spaghetti together. The structures, put together by teams of two to three students, competed in the sixth annual Spaghetti Bridge Contest at the Maryland Science Center.

Seth Tibbitts works on his team's prize-winning Calamari Crossing.

The students--all freshmen enrolled in the What Is Engineering? course--had to follow strict rules governing the size, weight and design of the model bridges. The winning bridge was the one that supported the greatest amount of weight without snapping.

This year's winning bridge, called Calamari Crossing, held 41.4 kilograms or about 91 pounds before it broke. The students who built it were Yquem Roman of Monroe Township, N.J., Ryan Sutton of Winchester, Mass., and Seth Tibbitts of Syracuse, N.Y.

Professor Michael Karweit, Peter Canisius, Alice Bridgeman and Rob Brown.

The instructor for the class, Michael Karweit, a research professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, said he was impressed by the entire class's work because this was the first year in the contest's history that all student bridges held at least 10 kilograms or 22 pounds.