Da Vinci Bridge Built

cluening writes: "A bridge designed about 500 years ago by Leonardo Da Vinci has finally been built. It's mighty cool that something envisioned so long ago has actually been created with relatively little trouble." See also the project's home page.

Comments

Maybe not the vidication everybody thinks it is

[wowbagger]

This may not be the vindication everybody thinks it is.

First, the actual bridge is much smaller than the bridge that DaVinci envisioned. When you scale things down, they get stronger due to the cube/square law (strength varies as the square of size, mass as the cube - halving the size of an object reduces strength to a quarter, but reduces mass (and thus needed strength) to an eighth).

Second, the actual bridge is using laminated lumber, rather than the stone DaVinci specified. Wood is a very strong substance, and will flex rather than crumble like stone.

The project page is /.'ed, so I cannot see if they factored these into the design, and I didn't see the Nova special. Does anybody know if they took these factors into account?