Math Project Uses Spaghetti As Main Ingredient 

A math project that is bringing some fun and competition.And as Meghan Hayward tells us, one that is using a common food item.”Several years ago I was at a conference in Rhode Island and I heard this a lot of commotion coming from this room, just yelling and screaming and I wondered if there was a video game being played and they were using Prince spaghetti which I guess is out of business now and they made bridges out of spaghetti.”And that’s how Monmouth Academy students came about the spaghetti bridge breaking competition. With Tuesday’s event being the seventh annual.Any changes over the years?Well Gosselin says they’ve changed spaghetti, now using Delverde perciatelli number six.”This particular pasta is hollow in the middle and its much thicker than normal spaghetti so it gives the bridges a chance to hold more weight and its easier for the kids to handle basically.”But these kids can’t just put any old bridge together.”Be 5 inches wide so something can go under it, it has to have a 4 by 6 row bed that’s drivable. It must weigh at most 1 pound including the glue and pasta. And it has to be 2 inches at least inches high.”First year students Julia Destefano and Mackenzie Kelley got off to a rough start.”We were so nervous we kinda doubted ourselves. We weren’t sure if we were going to hold 200 pounds here we are with 4,000.”With the first-year requirement only being 200 pounds Destefano and Kelley exceeded that by a lot.But second-year contestant Corey Duike had more of a challenge. His bridge has to be able to hold 300 pounds.”I just know we used a ton of glue and tightly compacted our triple bonds.”A fun math project that gets a lot of minds thinking. Teens, who you might say, have a real hunger for knowledge.