WOULD-BE engineers from Hartford C of E High School students won a technology tournament for local high schools.

Two teams of four students from each of Weaverham High School, Hartford High and The County High School Leftwich took part in the tournament on February 12, which was organised by the Rotary Club of Northwich and held at Hartford High.

Each team had been told to bring along a set list of tools, and they would be taking part in a tournament to design and build a mechanism to complete a designated task.

They were not told in advance what it would be.

At the start of the day the students were told they were members of a team of engineers involved in the design, construction and testing of a bridge over a river.

The bridge was to be built before the entrance to a busy port. The bridge was to be in two sections, one permanent and the other had to be opened to allow tall ships to pass through.

Materials given to the students comprised pieces of A4 card, jumbo drinking straws, string and thread, a length of dowel, drawing pins, split pin paper fasteners, wooden pulleys and modelling clay.

Using these materials, they had to construct a model of their bridge on a baseboard. The baseboards were built by John Rimmer and Martin Fallon of Northwich Rotary Club.

John also made two sets of model ships and barges which had to be able to pass under the model bridge.

The bridge also had to be able to withstand a test weight of 1kg being drawn across it.

In addition the teams had to produce a portfolio describing how the design was arrived at, diagrams and working sketches and challenges that the team had overcome.

The teams were assessed by Rotary judges. All the teams completed the task of building the bridge and most survived the demanding test of having a 1Kg weight pulled across it.

This high level of achievement gave the judges a difficult task, but a winning team did emerge, an all-female team of Saffron Coppock, Olivia Moynihan, Charlotte Caldwell and Amber Sperring-Toy from Hartford High.

The winning team and their teacher, curriculum team leader for design and technology, Alan Kelly, were presented with winners’ medals and a plate trophy by Rotary Club of Northwich president John Walton.

All the competitors received with certificates of participation.