A team from a Burgas vocational school of construction, architecture and geodesy has won the 12th national "Varna Spaghetti Engineering" creative skills contest. The "Pasta Under Pressure" team from the "Kolyo Ficheto" school took first place, Varna Free University, which hosts and organises the event, said in announcing the results.
Sixteen teams from eight vocational schools of construction, architecture and geodesy competed in Varna. They came from Sofia, Veliko Tarnovo, Stara Zagora, Haskovo, Kardzhali, Burgas, Shumen and Varna. The students had 180 minutes to build a tower crane from spaghetti, using only pasta, silicone, connectors and rope. The Burgas crane was the tallest.
The winners are Ismet Osman, Denitsa Madzhurova and Liliya Valieva, led by engineer Kremena Markova. Their crane is more than 2 metres tall, with a jib longer than 1 metre, and it lifted a load of 600 grams.
Second place went to the "Hristo Botev" school in Sofia and its team "Engineering Thought". The team members are Ventsislav Dimov, Danaya Deneva and Martin Kaschiev, and their leader is engineer Diana Nikolova. Their crane is 1.80 metres tall and lifted 3 kilograms.
Third place went to Nadezhda Delitoneva, Mihaela Delcheva and Kristiana Dimitrova from the "Tsar Ivan Asen II" school in Haskovo. Their team is called "Pasta Masters" and their leader is engineer Nedelina Aleksandrova. Their structure uses about 650 grams of spaghetti and lifted 1.2 kilograms. The jury also singled out the Haskovo team for a good design idea.