We describe a hands-on, collaborative activity designed to illustrate general properties of evolution, provide practice for quantitative skills, promote creativity and collaboration, and enable student self-assessment of learning. During the activity, teams construct bridges using common office supplies. The best-performing bridge becomes the template for a second generation of bridges. After students have tested two generations of bridges, they manipulate, visualize, and analyze their data. Using these analyses, students make evidence-based claims about key evolutionary concepts: adaptation, trade-offs between traits, and complexity. Our study included multiple lab sections (analogous to populations), so students see that evolution can proceed differently across populations. Student responses indicated the activity fostered community and teamwork, helped students understand evolution, and improved their quantitative skills. To assess how well this activity illustrated predictions of evolutionary theory, we analyzed the full dataset across lab sections. This activity incorporates science teaching best practices and could be readily adapted for learning goals beyond evolution.