Okay... so... Republicans... I know you're not big on science, but the Earth is not supposed to get so hot that metal expands to the point that we can't move a metal bridge that's reliably moved for a very long time.
the Earth is not supposed to
I don't think we get to say what the earth is "supposed to" do.
For most of the earths existence it wouldn't be possible for humans to exist. I don't think it really gives a shit about a bridge we built.
Is official. 2024 is using early 2000 blockbusters movie's plots now. What a bunch of lazy screenwriters.
Not the same damage, nor the same cause.
Not the same Sun?
Not the same solar heat ray focused entirely on one bridge.
Tomatoes/ nuclear radioactive mutated Tomatos 🍅
... Pretty much the same 🤷♂️
Attack of the killer tomatos isn't the same as a good Beefsteak
/j
Point taken 👍
We had a similar issue with an older bridge here in Gothenburg, Sweden. The fix was to install water sprinklers during the summer to keep the bridge from expanding too much.
What if we cooled it with the blood of climate change deniers?
Dumb question, but why is the water cooler than the bridge? Because it was underground? Or does the evaporation help because it's endothermic?
It's a good question. Steel is very good at absorbing and retaining heat. Water on the other hand isn't. Metals in general have way better thermal conductivity than water.
Exposed to the sun at the same time, a piece of metal will warm up a few times faster than the water. I believe steels can be somewhere around 8-10 times less energy required than to heat a similar mass of water.
The water could even start out slightly warmer than the bridge. Evaporative cooling would also work here since there is plenty of ventilation around the bridge. But that can slow down based upon humidity level.
Because metals have way better thermal conductivity, they aren't good at retaining heat.
Heating equal masses of steel and water the same amount takes exactly the same energy, it just might take longer for the insulator vs. the conductor.
Specific heat of liquid water is around 4. Steel is like .45-.50 or around there. So it would take 450-500 joules to increase 1kg of steel 1C. Would take around 4k joules to increase 1kg of water by 1C.
Both. Even the river water below the surface will be cooler than steel that's been sitting in the sun. And putting that cool water on the bridge absorbs some of the heat and is removed in evaporation, just like sweating.
Water also needs a substantial amount of energy to evaporate, hence it will sip some heat from the environment around it when it evaporates. Combined with the good thermal conductivity of steel, the bridge cools off.
You get a similar effect when walking out of a hot shower. The hot water evaporates and cools you down.
Touch the roof of a car in the sun. Shit's hot.
Ah, we've reached the collapsing infrastructure stage of climate change. Oh good.
Are you kidding? This is infrastructure expansion!
At least it's effecting people responsible for climate change and not small tribes on far out islands like has been up to this point.
Billionaires don't use bridges. They won't notice till they can't fly.
They are definitely not driving between East Harlem and the South Bronx. No rich people live in either of those places and they don't connect any expensive areas.
Hurricane Sandy was the climate issue that really affected Downtown Manhattan. It's a big part of the reasons why wealthy people actually care about climate change.
In Switzerland a major highway got damaged by floods and they expect some valleys in the Alps to become uninhabitable. We are ahead!
Not a bridge expert, or really any kind of expert, really. But railroad rails are laid with a little gap to account for thermal expansion of the rail on hot days. If the expansion is more than designed for, you get buckling like this. This bridge was probably also designed to account for thermal expansion to a certain degree. It seems like more and more of our infrastructure is starting to fail, encountering heat levels it was never expected to encounter. I wonder if failures like this and worse are going to become a common headline
This bridge was probably also designed to account for thermal expansion to a certain degree. It seems like more and more of our infrastructure is starting to fail, encountering heat levels it was never expected to encounter. I wonder if failures like this and worse are going to become a common headline
Bridge engineer here (not much experience, so I wouldn't consider myself an expert, but I have more knowledge about it than the general public).
Your suspicions are correct, bridges are designed for thermal expansion. More of our infrastructure is starting to fail, and part of that is because it's experiencing climate it was never designed for (heat, sea level rise, more drastic storm surges, etc). I would fully expect this to be a more common headline. At least for several more years, anyway. If the federal money from the infrastructure bill the US passed a few years ago runs out or is not allocated to the right structures, then this will only get more common. I don't expect the Trump administration to champion an extension of these funds if they do run out. It was passed under Biden, after all.
As for this bridge in particular, this is a moveable steel bridge. The fact that it's moveable means it is particularly sensitive to expansion (as well as salinity which causes rusting). Too much expansion, and the steel will get stuck in one position. In a typical steel bridge, if the thermal expansion exceeds what it was designed for, you end up getting higher stress levels in the steel as it pushes harder against the abutments. Usually this is alright in the short term, since we design these to withstand much higher stresses than it will ever likely experience. Repeated cycles of this, however, will cause fatigue failure (think of a paperclip or metal spoon snapping after you bend it back and forth a bunch).
Anyways, there you have it. I rambled for too long about this lol.
I rambled for too long about this lol.
The fuck you did! Making the world a little less dumb, one ramble at a time, is a good thing. We don't all need to be specialists in everything, but a brief summary like this contributes to our general knowledge and is a net positive.
According to Practical Engineering, tracks are no longer given a gap. The gap causes premature wear and excess noise. Instead, they lay the track under tension, and weld the joins between sections.
There is still a limit on how much heat they can handle before buckling, of course. I just thought that was a neat innovation.
Rail is laid at a "neutral temperature" calculated from the min and max temperatures of an area. They want the rail to not pull apart in the cold or buckle in the heat. If average temperatures go up that calculated neutral temperature goes up so rail laid at a lower neutral temperature are more likely to buckle.
There are so many industries where building or manufacturing standards will not withstand environmental changes.
We've got something north of a trillion dollars in deferred infrastructure maintenance. You see the edges of the problem in the whole Flint water crisis, when a cheapo state appointed city planner overruled the local government to pump untreated river water through aging leaded pipes. Or the Minnesota bridge collapse.
But this kind of underfunded domestic investment is everywhere. We've leeched vast stocks of wealth from our urban core and thrown it into our war machine abroad, and now our nation is crumbling under our feet.
Climate change simply accelerates the speed of the rot.
It’s obviously Joe Biden’s fault. Bridgocide Joe.
You joke, but Kathy Hocul and Andrew Cuomo have been underfunding transit for over a decade.
This is absolutely a problem of "business friendly" Democrats diverting funding for basic public services to their corporate buddies at Amazon, across Wall Street, in the NYPD, and in the publicly subsidized sports arena racket.
Thanks Obama
There's a "spinning" draw bridge that goes onto Gwynn's Island in Virginia that they have to do this to. Not sure how new of a phenomenon that is but it's been at least a few years now.
Not the same traffic backup as NYC, but crazy still.
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