• Question: James, I was looking at your profile and I noticed the pic of you at sanfrancisco bridge, what stops those kind of bridges from colapsing

    Asked by petrolhead918spyder to James on 13 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: James Pope

      James Pope answered on 13 Mar 2015:

      Hi Petrolhead,

      The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is a suspension bridge. Basically, the road section of the bridge is held up (suspended) by lots of cables. In the photo you can see the really big thick ones, but there are thousands of smaller ones to.

      The cables are then attached to the two tall towers and these towers support the weight that is on the cables, stopping the bridge collapsing. There is though lots of cool science in the engineering of these bridges, specifically to stop vibrations, which in the early days of suspension bridges caused them to collapse.

      The Golden Gate Bridge is not particularly big. The Humber Bridge in Hull was the biggest in the world from when it was finished in 1981 to 1997, it is now ranked 7th. The coolest fact I know about the Humber Bridge is that its towers are 34 mm further apart at the top than at the bottom due to the curviture of the Earth!

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