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The Bridge on the River Lasagna

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The Bridge on the River Lasagna

Engineering students in Engineering 123 have been put to the task of constructing a bridge out of pasta. The Sentinel spoke to Team Tagliatelle about their project and how hungry they were to find if their construction would hold water.

“We’re cautiously optimistic,” said Emmet Schultz, gazing out over the meter-long bridge as Paul McLeod applied the final touches. Both were flanked by Will Goggin, who held the structure in place as to prevent any accidental damage. The bridge itself was aligned in order to connect two tables in the study room of residence hall. They received gnocchis on which direction would lead to success, but the pasta-bilities were endless.

“We evaluated all types to find the most suitable. We wanted to make sure we covered all our bases and didn’t allow the best one to slip past us. In the end, we settled on fettuccine, which was al dente for our purpose,” explained McLeod. Fettucine, McLeod continued, had the inherent properties of being stroganoff while bendy, and capable of adapting to pressure that was put to…strain… the pasta. In contrast, spaghetti snaps and linguine struggles to support the metaphorical marinara. To provide the paving for the deck, the best-o suggestion given to the class by instructor Jeremy Kingma was lasagna sheets, which the group quickly determined would not be alfredo the task. When asked if there was anything else that had to be taken into the calculations, Schultz offered the obvious reason for skipping on the spaghetti: “Because we’re not Eminem.”

A few days later, an exhausted Schultz gave a debriefing, elaborating on the results of the final stress test in class, which threatened to spiral out of control. “It was hard, but we pulled though.”

The bridge had to be strong enough to hold two kilos, or about 16 servings of farfelle. With a good choice of material, combined with more than 15 hours of effort per member and a strong team spirit to de-penne on, Team Tagliatelle managed to claim a victory in the class with only some very minor damage to the bridge, putting them flour ahead of the competition.

Editor’s note: A fusilli jokes are not meant to a-sauce-inate the serious nature of the assignment. 

 

 

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