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- aplardi, on 10/12/2007, -9/+139Eh, the Egyptians teamed with some good old fashioned slave labor could have done better.
- rstarr, on 10/12/2007, -6/+85Before those links I was ready to reply, "text or it didn't happen" and I've been waiting to use that line for a few days.
Thanks for ruining a good joke. - citsym, on 10/12/2007, -1/+80Also : http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_water_bridge.htm
- davidgid, on 10/12/2007, -8/+67Wow what an interesting engineering accomplishment.
- jpb0104, on 10/12/2007, -10/+61Did 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
http://officespam.chattablogs.com/archives/046209.html#more - utcursch, on 10/12/2007, -21/+61Digg me down, but this was on front page before:
http://www.digg.com/tech_news/Water_Bridge_in_Germany
http://www.digg.com/design/Water_Over_A_Bridge - noahhoward, on 10/12/2007, -7/+43Because gimped has another meaning and paintshopproed doesn't roll off the tongue.
- Al3x, on 10/12/2007, -3/+38So...is there like an on-ramp or what?
How do the boats get 'on' the canal? - kineticarl, on 10/12/2007, -7/+39Okay, but only if the displaced water is also totally removed from the canal. If the displaced water is still contained by the canal and the water level simply rises to compensate for the displacement, then the structure is supporting the weight of the water and the boat.
- arnar, on 10/12/2007, -2/+33@kineticarl: Yeah, but the rising water level is distributed over a very very large area - much bigger than the footprint of the boat. This renders the rise in water level negligible and distributes it's weight over the whole canal (and beyond).
I guess a moving boat will however cause a wave of increased pressure on the canal bottom. - ross., on 10/12/2007, -1/+28More here: http://officespam.chattablogs.com/archives/046209.html#more
- IEatHamburgers, on 10/12/2007, -2/+28@Al3x:
Locks. They move ships up and down between two different bodies of water. I live near a bunch of them in Michigan and it always amazes me that people will go through all that trouble to watch ore freighters go up and down twenty feet. - SkippyDoorknob, on 10/12/2007, -2/+27And an airport runway crossing over that
- ldkronos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+22To all of you talking about exactly how the water gets displaced, and if it is distributed over the canal, or allowed to flow out and then pumped back in, etc:
You are forgetting one important thing....there are locks at both ends. A boat pulls into the lock, the lock is filled with water until the water level is even with the canal, and then the gates open. So any displacement that needs to take place is done in the lock, before it is opened up to the canal. Thus the canal should never experience a change in water level. - scootscr15, on 10/12/2007, -3/+21I will be impressed when they do that over a road, with a set of train tracks in the middle, :)
- chriscromp, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19Uh... I'm thinking a significant portion of the expense of the project was for labor. So they did use if for jobs.
- TekeeTakShak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15Did this remind anyone else of Roller Coaster Tycoon?
- IEatHamburgers, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17Most spectacular accidents ever!
"Breaking news viewers, looks like we got an 82-car, 9-train, 3-airliner and two-freighter pileup in Germany." *pause* "Holy ***** that's awesome - er, I mean tragic." - kineticarl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16Call me obsessed, here's the math:
From wikipedia:
# Overall length 917 m (690 m over land and 228 m over water),
# Trough width 34 m
# Depth of water 4.25 m
Assuming a rectangular-shaped cross section, that makes a total volume of water = 132,506.5 m^3, or 4,679,423 ft^3. Water weighs 62.4 lb/ft^3, so the weight of water on the bridge is about 292 million pounds (133 million kg). I suppose a couple boats on top of that won't matter much. - cankillar, on 10/12/2007, -12/+25All that water + ships have got to be hundreds of tons.
..and aqueducts are basically sewers, incapable of holding freighter ships. - Navicerts, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13Space shuttle launching pad above it all?
- wild, on 10/12/2007, -11/+23why do people ask for a kleenex, need a band-aid or order a coke?
- SkippyDoorknob, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13With a tunnel underneath it all where baby ducks can cross safely.
- WasabiBomb, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13"Prove it to yourself. Put a pan of water on a bathroom scale and check the weight. Then add anything that floats to the water. The scale reading will increase by the weight of whatever it is you added."
But not if you let the displaced water escape from the pan, which is most likely what they do on that bridge. A floating object will displace water equal to its weight- so if you remove the water displaced by the boat, the total weight will stay the same. - unicronband, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12@ PJBonoVox:
Sticking plaster? Fizzing drink? What country are you from? - metalfalsetto, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Here's a photo of downtown Rochester, NY taken in 1906 (found on the the Library of Congress website) — it's the Erie Canal spanning the Genesee River.
http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3c00000/3c09000/3c09100/3c09154r.jpg - DEADB33F, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Meh, there's been a better one in wales for over 200 years...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/northeast/sites/in_pictures/pages/pont_aqueduct.shtml?12
It was constructed between 1795 1805 and is still in use today.
It's a proper mans aqueduct also as it has none of these namby pamby hand rail things!
Quite a long way down... http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/northeast/sites/in_pictures/pages/pont_aqueduct.shtml?3
I lived on a narrowboat for a few years and have been across this a couple of times, great fun. - jtjdt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/4/4c/Wasserkreuz_umweg.png
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+13Who built the bridge? Usually dumb things like this are thought up just to create jobs.
- teaguehopkins, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Google Maps Link:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=52%C2%B013%E2%80%B250%E2%80%B3N%2C%2011%C2%B042%E2%80%B24%E2%80%B3E - kineticarl, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7arnar: Quite right, sir. The weight is uniformly distributed and the weight of the boats compared to the weight of the likely very small.
So if the volume of water is constant in the bridge, the weight of the boats should be considered (even if it's relatively small).
If the water *level* is constant (displaced water is removed when boats are added), then you can design for water weight at that specific water level alone.
Either way, they probably used a fairly conservative factor of safety in building this thing, so it won't fail even if water overflows the sides. Having a structure like this fail would be pretty ugly. I'd like to see the locks at the ends of this thing to see how the boats get elevated on and off this thing. Anyone got a link for that? - dbr_onix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/falkirk/falkirkwheel/index.html
Somewhat similar project, the pictures don't really show it very well - It's basically a high-tech lock, the end of the canal (the seperated bit) rotates, carrying one boat up, and one down. Not quite as big as the Water Bridge, but still pretty impressive.. - jverber, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7@racekarl
From Wikipedia:
The 918-metre Magdeburg Water Bridge or Wasserstrassenkreuz in German, (52°13′50″N, 11°42′4″E), completed in October 2003, connects two important German shipping canals, the Elbe-Havel Canal and the Mittellandkanal, which leads to the country’s industrial Ruhr Valley heartland.
Engineers first conceived of joining the two waterways as far back as 1919 and by 1938 the Rothensee lock and bridge anchors were in place but construction was postponed during the first and second world wars. After the Cold War split Germany, the project was put on hold indefinitely by the East German government. With the reunification of Germany and the following establishment of major projects in transport tracks the Water Bridge again became a priority.
Construction began in 1997 and after six years and around half a billion euros the gigantic water bridge now connects Berlin’s inland harbour with the ports along the Rhine river. The huge tub created to transport ships over the Elbe took 24,000 metric tons of steel and 68,000 cubic meters of concrete to build.
Until the opening of the water bridge in October 2003 the ships moving between the Midland canal and the Elbe-Havel canal had to detour 12 km through the Rothensee lock, the Elbe and the Niegripp lock.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdeburg_Water_Bridge
Is it worth the cost just to avoid a 12km detour? I don't know...
I've walked across it... it's cool to see in person, but tough to get a good photo of... - racekarl, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Uh, what do you suppose the purpose of that project was?
- kineticarl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@IdKronos, with the missing clue. So the original statement was correct all along. Nice work.
- guygurari, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Some Physics here: http://4by12.com/blog/?s=water+bridge
- noahhoward, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Lol, aqueducts are not sewers. They are a means to transport water across a gap, just like a viaduct transports transit systems. All this is is a large aqueduct. The Falirk wheel has a similar segment. The fact that this carries larger canal boats doesn't change what it is or the engineering behind it. This is neat but old as dirt... literally.
- bicyclethief, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Alright already: Germans can engineer. Do they have to beat it over our heads?
- Upsizer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Wow, I guess one year and 116 days ago not everyone replied to the first comment.
- MarkyNouj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Let's pray to God the Chief Engineer didn't mess up. That is a hell of alot of weight.
- RobotCitizen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Looks like a Gonzales painting.
- not_michael, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@ PJBonoVox:
Interestingly some companies try to discourage the use of brand names to describe generic versions because if, for example, Coke becomes the common way to refer to all cola drinks the company could loss their trademark rights.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genericized_trademark - kcreekmore, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Cool. That one's a two-lane bridge.
- ldkronos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1read my post above...there is no change in water level. There are locks at both ends, and the displacement is accounted for when the locks are being filled.
- vtcessnapilot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2So the article showed up again after six months... Is it so horrible that there's one repeat in the pool of thousands of stories that hit the front page in that time frame? What if I didn't see it the first time around?
Don't like the story? Then don't read it. You wasted more time ranting about this article than it would take to breeze past the link. - whatever01, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3meh. Manchester, England has a swing aqueduct passing over a canal... http://www.penninewaterways.co.uk/bridgewater/bartonaqueduct.htm Googlemaps: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&z=18&ll=53.474622,-2.35263&spn=0.002803,0.005064&t=k&om=1
- KatCat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@jverber
Yes it was worth the money. It saves ships about 3 hours travel time between Hannover and Berlin. But more important than the time saving is that for the first time big barges can pass the city of Magdeburg. Plus the river Elbe always has a low water lever, and with the water bridge they will just plain bypass the Elbe. - hirebrand, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1132,449 metric tons, actually.
- nepawoods, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The Roebling Delaware Aqueduct did exactly this over 150 years ago (1848 to 1898), and carried coal barges above and across the Delaware river. http://www.nps.gov/upde/historyculture/roeblingbridge.htm
- cuemkid, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Did 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
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Engineers first conceived of joining the two waterways as far back as 1919 and by 1938 the Rothensee lock and bridge anchors were in place but construction was postponed during the first and second world wars. After the Cold War split Germany, the project was put on hold indefinitely by the East German government. With the reunification of Germany and the following establishment of major projects in transport tracks the Water Bridge again became a priority. -
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