Recent content by Feynman Bongos

I have just observed that in the original novel the bridge is, unusually for a railway, a suspension not as in the film a trestle structure. I would think that the characteristics of a suspension bridge would increase relative to those of vertical compression (or tension) the effects of...

Ah, my schooldays were some while ago... Last weekend I happened to see the old movie Around The World In Eighty Days. There's a scene where a train is about to go over just such a bridge. (Naturally the bridge is flat.) The driver chooses to back up so he can then have a good run at it in...

If you need to cross a bridge and you have reason to worry about its load-bearing capacity, do you choose to drive across it fast, or slow, or does it not matter? What are the considerations?