Accelerated Arrogance: The FIU Pedestrian Bridge Collapse

I'm approximately a million hours away from being a structural engineer, but I think I could look at the cracks shown in the video at 6:49, 10:47, and 16:20 and say that maybe they shouldn't be going ahead with moving the bridge into place.

I never would have thought of the shifting forces during the movement of the bridge from its initial fabrication location, but the need to constantly restress the concrete with each move is fascinating. I would think that would require the concrete to be stressed and stressed and eventually over-stressed.

Man Slams World's Tallest Glass Bridge With a Sledgehammer

<br /> I'm not interested in walking on that bridge.

It doesn't matter how many of the identical panels that British reporters try to destroy. It only matter that I might actually look downward, in which case I would be messing up those beautiful, glass panels because I'd wet m'self.

Desperate fear of heights, doncha know?

The clouds might help, but the video below makes me think they really wouldn't help too much.

Scary! Massive waves on huge road bridge send Volgograd drivers ashpalt surfing

It's not the Tacoma Narrows Bridge or anything.

Actually, it's the Volgograd Bridge in a video taken in May 2010. Seems that it has - so far at least - had a much more successful fate than did good ol' Galloping Gertie. Seems that they've installed 'semi-active tuned mass dampers' to take care of the oscillations.

That must make for far less entertaining driving across the bridge.

Point Pleasant Silver Bridge Part 2

Today is the 72nd anniversary of the failure of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge - a more famous bridge collapse here in the US than the one shown in the video here. I'll post that video in a bit, but this one caught my eye for MatSciWit because of the discussion of the failure detection methods used here to find out why the Point Pleasant Silver Bridge over the Ohio River collapsed in 1967. They video uses computer recreation and eye-witness testimony to explore the pitting corrosion, tension/compression in manufacturing, and material failure on the suspension bridge.

This is merely the middle of three parts to the video. Check out the other two after the jump...