Rachlin

Andrew Rachlin

My bridge is called the Tacoma Narrows bridge. The bridge was opened to the public on July 1, 1940 in Tacoma washington. The bridge is classified as Light traffic bridge and is used to connect Tacoma Washington, and the Kitsap peninsula. The bridge is a very long and narrow suspension bridge which was perfect for the long span of the river. The bridge at its largest span is 2800 feet long and is only 39 feet wide. When the bridge was being built the government gave the the builders 6.4 million dollar to work with. However, when the bridge was almost done, they ran out of money and was granted another 1.6 million dollars bring the total to about 8 million dollars. The bridge was Made out concrete and steel. The biggest challenge that the bridge faced was that it swayed in the the wind. To over come the feat, the designer installed 8 foot tall steel supports columns on each side of the bridge that ran along side the bridge. However the supports failed and before the designer could issue a new design, the bridge had collapsed. The bridge took a total of two years to build. On November 7, 1940 the bridge had collapsed. On a very windy day, wind gusts of up 42 mph swayed the bridge so much that it wore out one of the suspension cables and snapped it. This caused a chain reaction that snapped other cables, weakened the bridge and finally collapsed it. media type="youtube" key="m686UO68AXI" width="425" height="350"media type="googlemap" key="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=embed&hl=en&geocode=&q=tacoma+narrows+bridge&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=48.77566,71.279297&ie=UTF8&hq=tacoma+narrows+bridge&hnear=&ll=47.267329,-122.54991&spn=0.006295,0.006295&layer=c&cbll=47.270802,-122.554261&panoid=71VWZ80wV0mN8eFjKC2nWg&cbp=12,143.26,,0,7.99&output=svembed" width="425" height="350"