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By Amelia Shultz
The Phoenix Student Media
What is Storm the Citadel?
Bridge building and trebuchet, both are competitions at the Storm the Citadel. Storm the Citadel is a group STEM competition in which teams of students from across the state of South Carolina can compete in. This includes things like bottle rockets, bridge building, robotics, and trebuchet. PSA’s teams compete in the trebuchet and bridge building competitions.
Bridge building
Our bridge building team, the The Phoenix Flames, consists of three amazing young women: Marisa Blunt, Liberty Shultz, and Tiffany Dinh. The team was tasked with making a bridge that is light and made from only popsicle sticks and wood glue, yet can hold 100 pounds. They took an interesting approach to this: making homemade nails and staggering the popsicle sticks to make their bridge as strong as possible. They made the nails by cutting the popsicles sticks into small pieces and inserting them where the parts of the bridge connect using a drill and wood glue. For their main platform they made four layers of popsicle sticks in alternating directions and connected them. And for their beams they cut the edges off of the popsicle sticks and layered the sticks in a bricklike pattern, covering it in glue, and connecting them to make thicker beams.
After all of their hard work and long hours, the bridge held 563 pounds, and four cadets had to stand on the platform to keep it from tipping over. The team came in second place for design, because after the first 100 pounds the weight of the bridge itself was judged, and our team’s bridge was heavier than the winning team's bridge. The team came in first for their engineering notebook; which displayed to the judges the process of building the bridge and impressed them thoroughly.
Our highschool team captain, Elijah Friedman, led Medieval Shipping and Handling to victory in the distance competition, by firing their trebuchet 200 feet.
Our middle school team’s captain, Griffen Quartuccio, led us to victory in the accuracy competition where we beat out multiple highschool and middle school teams with about 15 points overall by consistently firing in a range of 100 to 150 feet.
Trebuchet
PSA has two trebuchet teams: the Burning Phoenixes (MS) and Medieval Shipping and Handling (HS). Trebuchet is a mix of engineering and sport. Trebuchets are like extra complicated catapults, (as pictured above firing; and to the right in the loading process) they are loaded in a down position and winded up to fire. Every trebuchet is different, but our trebuchets fire in a circular fashion and are compact as well as on wheels so that they can be aimed easily and accurately.
*A group picture after the competition. Not Pictured: Marisa Blunt, Zach Boo, Tyler Boo.*
Congratulations to The Burning Phoenixes: Griffen Quarticcio, Montgomery Baughman, Tyler Boo, Evan Colonna, Emily Colonna, Mateo Coppage, Amelia Shultz, Ava Shardrick, and their coach, Brian Coppage. Kudos to Medieval Shipping and Handling: Elijah Friedman, Zach Lewis, Zander Shultz, Zach Boo, Eduardo Luna, Grant Quartuccio, and their coach, George Quartuccio. And bravo to The Phoenix Flames: Marisa Blunt, Tiffany Dinh, Liberty Shultz, and their coach, Kim Shultz.
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