Tulsa 5th Graders Show Off The Engineer Skills

Some future Oklahoma engineers showed off their skills Friday.  

Almost 900 children from schools all around Tulsa - mainly suburbs and private schools - were part of the challenge: to build a better paper airplane or maybe load up pennies on a boat made only of aluminum foil.

Over at the toothpick bridge challenge - everybody's bridge failed - but that's ok, because the goal was to see how much weight it could handle.

"We thought it would be kind of cool to build a toothpick bridge," 9th grader Kelsey Goodwin said.

And we just kind of learned to challenge ourselves in it.""

The best bridges held more than 60 pounds. The engineering foundation does this to stimulate what they believe in a natural interest in engineering

"It's the way we started," said Meg Broge with the Tulsa Engineering Foundation. "It's what we know works to get others involved in engineering and to get kids thinking along the lines of science and technology."