Straws are not just for sipping soft drinks. With a little imagination and scientific know-how, they become beams and girders - building blocks for a city of plastic.
This is what the Physics and Materials Science Department of City University of Hong Kong (CityU) had in mind when it invited over 400 teams from more than 100 schools to compete in a day- long straw tower-building competition at its Kowloon Tong campus.
Each team was given 100 straws and a 50-metre roll of string from which to construct its tower. The top had to support a 335 ml soft drink can and the highest would be declared the winner.
Teams from Carmel Pak U Secondary School and CNEC Christian College came tops in the junior and senior sections respectively.
Carmel third-formers Hui Kai-shing and Ng Tse-kin erected a 144.9 cm tower with tips from their physics teacher.
Kai-shing said: 'Through competing, I've learned a lot about applied physics.' Classmate Tse-kin agreed the hands-on experience really brought her textbook lessons to life.