What can you do with spaghetti and lasagna besides eat it? How about build a bridge?

That's what high school students did Saturday when MESA € the Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement program € held a statewide competition on the University of Arizona campus.

Cholla High School students Marcos Herrerras and Veronica Olivas won second place for the bridge they built made of spaghetti and lasagna noodles.

The winning bridge was determined by dividing the amount of weight it could support by the weight of the actual bridge.

Herrerras also won first place in the paper airplane target competition.

"MESA Day was a lot of fun, there was lots to do, free food, and most of all we won," Herrerras said.

MESA is a part of UA's Early Outreach Program. It operates in five middle schools and 18 high schools throughout the state.

The MESA program offers tutoring, mentor services and scholarships and also sponsors a variety of activities for its students. Its purpose is to increase the number of underrepresented ethnic groups working in professions related to mathematics, engineering and the physical sciences.

Over 600 middle school and high school students attended MESA Day, which alternates between the UA and ASU each year. Students competed in events such as spelling bees, essay writing contests, rehearsed speech contests and Le Mouse, a race with student-built cars powered solely by a mouse trap.

Gabriel Aldaz, mechanical engineering senior, said, "It was fascinating watching how incredibly ingenious some of the devices built for Le Mouse were. Most of them would have beaten anything I would have tried to make."

Aldaz, along with about 25 other UA students, helped coordinate MESA Day.

There were individual event winners as well as overall school winners. Chris Barba, a senior at Flowing Wells High School, won first place in the Sail Car event, third place in Le Mouse, and second place in the Impromptu Speech competition. The title of his speech was "Which Presidential Candidate Should Win?"

"Doing this competition is the best part of being in MESA," he said. "It's what it's all about; we wait for it all year."

Flowing Wells High School tied with Peoria High School for first place in the overall contest. Tempe High School was second and Desert View was third.

There were winners and losers Saturday, but as the vans and buses pulled away a little after 6 p.m., they all contained laughing students.