PORT ANGELES — Derek Johnson with the help of local engineers is trying to build a bridge spanning physics, practicality and fun.

Three Port Angeles High School students, who are not yet selected, will compete Saturday in a Popsicle-stick bridge-building contest in Seattle against Puget Sound-area high school students.

The contest will be held at the Seattle Museum of Flight and is sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers youth division.

About a half-dozen teams have crafted bridges that range in style from Japanese foot bridges to industrial and traditional bridges.

Regardless of whether the Port Angeles bridge is selected to compete, all of the groups will get to attend the contest.

Johnson, who has been encouraging students to participate for 13 years, said he wouldn’t do it if it weren’t for the competition and the local engineers who annually donate hours and hours of time to give engineering tips to the youths.

“Having these guys come in and the competition is the only thing that separates this from a middle school science project,” he said.

“With that, it brings it to this whole new level.”

Engineers Gene Unger, who owns his own firm, Chris Hartman with Zenovic & Associates and Joe Donisi, an engineer for Clallam County, are the three professionals who advised the young bridge-builders this year.

The firms also donate money so that the team that does the best from Port Angeles — regardless of how it ranks at the Seattle competition — gets $500 per team member in scholarships.

On Wednesday, the students gathered for their last meeting with the engineers before the Saturday competition.

Although Donisi couldn’t attend — he was at a conference on inspecting life-size bridges — the others took questions from students and encouraged them as they made last-minute changes to the Popsicle-stick spans.

Never giving the answer or telling the students what to do — much less doing anything for them — the engineers only guided them through the decision-making process.

Unger said this year’s group of bridges is among the strongest he has seen in the past dozen years.

“Some of these bridges can hold 400 pounds — that is really something,” he said.

The most he has ever seen a Popsicle-stick bridge hold is 1,900 pounds — but that was under different conditions.

“We engineers are very tricky,” he said.

“We work very hard to change the conditions and criteria every year so that someone can’t just build the same bridge again.”

The bridges are judged on strength versus weight — the model cannot weigh more than 375 grams — and on aesthetics.

Nick Johnson, Derek Johnson’s son, and Kelley Mayer worked together on a bridge for the competition.

Mayer said the pair worked to have a double brace in the most fragile portion of the truss and that the use of triangles reinforced the bridge as well.

Rachel Lindquist, a senior, said she was inspired by Japanese foot bridges to have an arched deck on her model.

“The most unique thing about my bridge is the natural curve,” she said.

She wanted to keep the bridge simple so the aesthetics would be clean, she said.

When she tested a portion of her bridge, it held more than 180 pounds — which means the full bridge should hold more than 400, she said.

The students have been working on their Popsicle projects since November.

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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.