Fire Crossing

I have always been fascinated by nature. The thing that interests me the most, is when the way animals and nature interact with the world, is applied to human inventions.

I am 17 years old and entering my senior year of high school and reside in Waterbury, CT. My goal: to design a pedestrian bridge inspired by a ferocious, tiny creature, the fire ant.

One of the incredible abilities of the fire ant is to create a seemingly impossible floating bridge. So how do fire ants do it? Simple. Team Work. They lock their legs together, trapping air bubbles beneath them to create a floating-like fluid structure that goes with the flow of the water. So I endeavored to create a bridge that mimics this awesome skill.

The location I chose for this bridge is in downtown Waterbury, on the Naugatuck River, right next to a home depot. This bridge connects the banks of a river, where insects rule, to a busy store, where humans scurry about, doing their own kind of work.

I figured the best way to copy the fire ants was to create an individual module that can be joined to other modules, allowing the bridge to be easily transported and precisely customizable.

So I went into Tinkercad and began, well... to tinker! Out of my tinkering came the following points:

1. In order to create sufficient buoyancy, the modules could be comprised of foam
2. To create a feasible walking surface, the foam can be coated in a non-slick plastic
3. To connect the modules, a ball and socket joint could be used.

After the module was created, it was time to see how it would look when laid out. The result looked really cool! It resembled the basic concept of a fire ant bridge.

Even though I chose a specific location for the bridge, it can be customized to fit anywhere and can easily be moved or disassembled.

There is a tremendous lesson to be learned from the fire ant. In order for a fire ant colony to succeed and survive, they need to work together as a single unit. This lesson can be applied to us. In order for us to accomplish anything, we must put our neighbor's needs before our own, only then can we work together to accomplish our goals.

I created this bridge not only because of the amazing physical properties of the fire ant but also the extraordinary lesson for us. We have to shelve our biases and only then can we work towards a common goal.