As the title states, how do wooden bridges hold the weight of trains?
I’m specifically speaking of steam locomotives in the late 1800s.
I know there is some sort of engineering involved, and I know there’s a lot of wooden beams and some sort of science behind the angles and supports but I just don’t get it and I would like to understand.
Thank you!
In: Engineering
Wood is much stronger than you think. And you can arrange wood in such a way that it gets very strong and also flexible.
In high school, I was on our science Olympiad team and we had competitions where you build bridges, towers, and boomilevers out of wood such as balsa and bass wood. Those structures would often have an efficiency of > 2,000 (e.g., a 7.5 gram bridge could support a 15 kg load)
Latest Answers