What is a good efficiency score for a balsa bridge?
What reported scores look like, why it depends on the contest, and how to judge your bridge against others built for the same rules.
Updated · 1 min read
Short answer: it depends on the contest, so compare yourself with bridges built to the same rules. We found no published statistics of typical scores, only individual examples.
Reported examples
| Source | Result |
|---|---|
| Science Olympiad examples (coach's blog) | efficiency about 1,584 and 1,630 |
| Lab prototype truss (published paper) | efficiency reported as 1,161 |
| Outreach contest with a 100 lb load cap | highest possible efficiency about 200 to 230 |
These are individual cases from skilled builders or capped contests, so don't read them as the average. The cap case shows why: when the load is capped, the best possible score is set by the mass.
How to judge your bridge
- Compare with your own earlier bridges. An improvement is a good result.
- Compare with results from the same contest and year, if the organizer publishes them.
- Check whether the load was capped, since that changes what is possible.
See how efficiency is scored and how contests score entries.