Photo  of  the  month -  Aug  2006

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Water Bridge in Germany.... Six years, 500 million euros, 918 meters long.

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.

 
 

 


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