Amazing

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Feeder Fish
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Jun 29, 2005
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Even after you see it, it is still hard to believe !

Water Bridge in Germany.... What a feat!

Six years, 500 million euros, 918 meters long.......now this is engineering!

This is a channel-bridge over the River Elbe and joins the former East and West Germany, as part of the unification project. It is located in the city of Magdeburg, near Berlin. The photo was taken on the day of inauguration.

To those who appreciate engineering projects, here's a puzzle for you armchair engineers and physicists. Did that bridge have to be designed to withstand the additional weight of ship and barge traffic, or just the weight of the water?



Answer:

It only needs to be designed to withstand the weight of the water!

Why? A ship always displaces an amount of water that weighs the same as the ship, regardless of how heavily a ship may be loaded.

Remember your high school physics, and the fly in an enclosed bottle project? Similarly, the super sensitive scale proved that it didn't make any difference whether the fly was sitting on the bottom, walking up the side, or flying around. The bottle, air, and fly were a single unit of mass and always weighed the same.

bridge.jpg
 
FISH ROOM PLUS said:
Even after you see it, it is still hard to believe !

Water Bridge in Germany.... What a feat!

Six years, 500 million euros, 918 meters long.......now this is engineering!

This is a channel-bridge over the River Elbe and joins the former East and West Germany, as part of the unification project. It is located in the city of Magdeburg, near Berlin. The photo was taken on the day of inauguration.

To those who appreciate engineering projects, here's a puzzle for you armchair engineers and physicists. Did that bridge have to be designed to withstand the additional weight of ship and barge traffic, or just the weight of the water?



Answer:

It only needs to be designed to withstand the weight of the water!

Why? A ship always displaces an amount of water that weighs the same as the ship, regardless of how heavily a ship may be loaded.

Remember your high school physics, and the fly in an enclosed bottle project? Similarly, the super sensitive scale proved that it didn't make any difference whether the fly was sitting on the bottom, walking up the side, or flying around. The bottle, air, and fly were a single unit of mass and always weighed the same.

bridge.jpg


I am thinking that displacement and weight are two separate issues. The volume would be the same no matter how many ships were on the bridge, but steel is more dense, has a greater mass, i.e. weighs more than water. Therefore the bridge would have to be built to withstand the weight of the water plus ships minus the amount of water displaced by the ships.
 
Maybe it's the redneck in me, but I can just see me and a bunch of my friends floating along that thing in inner-tubes with a nice cold beer in our hands. C'mon everybody! We're goin tooooooobin'!
redneck_biggrin.gif
 
rottbo said:
but the ships also have air in them so they only displace the smae amount of weight more or less

You're right, then the formula is (weight of water) plus (weight of ship plus air, cargo, the drunk guy driving it, etc. LOL) minus (weight of water displaced). Maybe a ship does weigh about the same as water, maybe it doesn't. Just questioning the formula, not the math. I am not a physicist, just a fishkeeper with time.:thumbsup:
 
I am in. I hope we don't get caught in the prop. LOL
 
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