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FALL RIVER - The group of high school girls are spending their summer morning hearing about bridge design and building theories, the history of bridges, and types of bridges across the country - spanning from the first manmade kind, to beam, arch, masonry, truss and suspension.

They've split into three groups and each has sketched a bridge design of their own. Now, the time has come to construct it - a 1-foot-wide, 6-foot-long span to be fixed to two abutments. Their materials: 3/4-inch PVC tubing, Masonite, bamboo sticks, twine, tape, screws and nails.

At the very least, the bridge span must support the weight of one of the team members. At its best, the span must be able to take the weight of instructor Anthony Ucci, head of the engineering department at Bristol Community College.

Emily Lukin, 17, who will be a senior at Attleboro High School in September, has huddled with her team, discussing what they should purchase.

The teams can be penalized if they buy too much for the project. They only get back 50 cents on the dollar; cost efficiency is another consideration in this good-natured competition during the Women In Technology summer camp at the college's Fall River campus.

The sleepover program, started in 1996, introduces young women to technology careers, ones that are perhaps still considered nontraditional for females.

Lukin is in the electrical program at AHS where she says there's only one other girl in her class.

She is planning to pursue some type of engineering career.

The three-day Women in Technology camp is funded by the BCC Foundation and the National Science Foundation.

Lukin already knew other young women at the camp from Dartmouth, Dighton-Rehoboth Regional, Diman Regional, Greater New Bedford Regional, Taunton and Tiverton high schools, since a number of them had previously participated in Women in Technology programs through their schools.

For the bridge building exercise, Lukin's team includes Kelly Dwyer, 18, who just graduated from Dartmouth High and whose interest is in architecture. She was designated team mentor. It also includes Alyssa Martin, 16, of Taunton, who is in the drafting program at her school, and Jocelyn Pacheco, 17, of Diman, also interested in drafting.

Lukin, with her slender build, was designated as the team member who would test the bridge by walking across it.

"I think our team did a good job" on the design, said Lukin just before the team started building the bridge. "I think we might be able to hold up the teacher."

There was a lot of measuring - and measuring again. Over the course of the next hour, team members talked among themselves, each suggesting ways to execute their design and deciding the best course of construction. Getting the bridge underway was initially shaky and at one point Lukin joked that perhaps she shouldn't drink the bottle of water offered during a break so as not to add any additional weight requirements for the support.

Instructor Al Censorio helped the girls to learn how to drill the holes in the pipe in order to align the bamboo sticks called for in their design.

After awhile, the team members, adorned with safety glasses, were immersed in their tasks: one holding the pipe while another drilled holes, another measuring the bamboo stick to be sawed, handing them off to another who held the pre-measured stick while yet another sawed.

"Should we buy tape, because that's a little loose," Lukin said as the pieces were tentatively joined. In the meantime, one of the bamboo sticks Martin was sawing shattered. "Damn it," she muttered. They will need to buy more sticks.

The team has figured it would need lots of tape. "The stronger, the better," said one of the girls.

When a break was called, the team largely continued to work. Members of each of the three teams occasionally snuck a glance at the other teams' bridges and their progress.

At the midway point, after one side of the span was completed, the team Lukin was on decided to test drive their construction on the abutments outside the shop classroom. It bowed.

"That's definitely not going to work," Pacheco commented. "You can try to walk across it," she offered doubtfully to Lukin.

"I'm too scared," Lukin joked.

Back to the drawing board; they decide to carry out the design in full on paper. Then they start the next leg of their project, moving along quicker and with more confidence and determination.

Four hours from when they started, the construction comes to a close.

In the end, it was a bit like watching someone walking a swaying rope bridge over a deep gorge, though the handmade bridge is only feet above the pavement with bags of packing "peanuts" to cushion a fall.

Lukin makes it across - albeit just barely. Ucci held no death wish; it wouldn't support him.

Nonetheless, it was the only bridge to support a team member, winning Lukin's team the title of strongest bridge. They also earned kudos for best teamwork.

Lukin said the Women in Technology program and camps help girls take the risk of going into unexplored territory.

The day after the bridge building exercise, the girls would head to the Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institute and then back to campus to do some water quality testing. Also on their summer camp agenda was building a rocket to be launched from a roof at night; hearing from a female architectural engineer who would take them to a construction project in Westport she was responsible for designing; taking in a women's image workshop; and learning about sound and graphics design, computer forensics and programming video games.

"(The program) is important because there's not a lot of women in technology," Lukin said. Programs like BCC's, she said, "will get more women into the field."

SUSAN LaHOUD can be reached at 508-236-0398 or at slahoud@thesunchronicle.com.

To see more photos from the Women in Technology bridge-building project, click on Photo Gallery on the Home page and then click on the story.