KidBridges

ENTRY 1

Today when I was having a hard time concentrating in math class, Ms. T

told us that we're going to go on a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Lucas just saw a TV show where a bridge collapsed and all the cars fell in the water and lots of people drowned. So he told the whole class about it. Then, just to see if he could scare people, he said "Just because the bridge has thousands of cars going across it every day, and it hasn't collapsed, doesn't mean that it won't fall in the river right when we're on it."

Nobody acted scared, because we all really wanted to go on the trip.

Ms T. just said "Great question, I always wanted to know the answer to that too." But she really meant, "No way will the bridge fall down next week."

Anyhow, Ms. T said every group in the class has to think up a question about the bridge and then find out the answer. So, since Lucas is in my group

we got to ask:

"How do we know the Brooklyn Bridge won't fall down?"

Meanwhile, our group is supposed to learn about the forces that act on the bridge and on other structures. Ms. T. told us that two of the forces are tension

and compression,

and we could start with them.

Sheryl looked them up in the book Ms. T. gave us, called, The Art of Construction

. She found out

that stuff that's stretched like a rubber band is "in tension" and stuff that's squished together is "in compression".

Will you explain this in class tomorrow? Better still, can you think of a way to demonstrate what you learned about these forces?

Ms. T.

But we still don't know how these forces make the bridge stand up and hold all those cars and people.

You might need some help here. First you can look again at "The Art of Construction" by Mario Salvadori,

that might help you with your demonstration. And of course we'll keep our eyes and minds open when we walk over the bridge.

Ms. T.

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