from the they-didn't-build-it-and-no-one-came dept.
Seems that Leonardo designed a 280 meter single-span bridge in response to a sultan's request. The configuration is a very flat arch, with wide "feet" at each end to spread the loads. Nothing in antiquity was remotely close to this in a single span, at that time bridges were built with circular arches with columns at each end (many columns sitting in the riverbed). While the shape of this bridge has been approximated with modern materials, this time the researchers wanted to determine if it could have been built with what was on site -- big, cut stone. Story is here, http://news.mit.edu/2019/leonardo-da-vinci-bridge-test-1010
Spoiler alert: Leonardo knew what he was doing.
...
The bridge would have been about 280 meters long (though Leonardo himself was using a different measurement system, since the metric system was still a few centuries off), making it the longest span in the world at that time, had it been built. "It's incredibly ambitious," Bast says. "It was about 10 times longer than typical bridges of that time."The design also featured an unusual way of stabilizing the span against lateral motions — something that has resulted in the collapse of many bridges over the centuries. To combat that, Leonardo proposed abutments that splayed outward on either side, like a standing subway rider widening her stance to balance in a swaying car.
In his notebooks and letter to the Sultan, Leonardo provided no details about the materials that would be used or the method of construction. Bast and the team analyzed the materials available at the time and concluded that the bridge could only have been made of stone, because wood or brick could not have carried the loads of such a long span. And they concluded that, as in classical masonry bridges such as those built by the Romans, the bridge would stand on its own under the force of gravity, without any fasteners or mortar to hold the stone together.
To prove that, they had to build a model and demonstrate its stability. That required figuring out how to slice up the complex shape into individual blocks that could be assembled into the final structure. While the full-scale bridge would have been made up of thousands of stone blocks, they decided on a design with 126 blocks for their model, which was built at a scale of 1 to 500 (making it about 32 inches long). Then the individual blocks were made on a 3D printer, taking about six hours per block to produce.
There is also a 2 minute video (but I'm sure no one here will bother to watch it!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHrUaifoMto
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @05:28AM (2 children)
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Vote Libertarian Republican.
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(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @06:23AM
That model-fucker?
And this after he set the entire Amazon on fire, so no one would get their packages by Christmas! Bad move, Leonardo!!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @08:35AM
>SoylentPolitics is the world's finest online community of wealthy sexagenarians.
ok
>Vote Libertarian Republican.
no, the idea of vote is obsolete
>Kill the poor.
why discriminating, kill and then ask how much money they had
>Money makes right.
PRINTING money makes right, child.
>Take from the young and give to the old.
and take from the old what they contributed throughout their life and give it to the immigrant, nice circle
>Donate your life savings today, right the fuck now.
for the victory of communism, signed pol pot
>Eternal Motto: Fuck You, Got Mine, Give Me Yours.
pronto
>SoylentPolicy: Worldwide death penalty, no discussion...
Oh i see you are extremely new here
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @07:26AM
Today is the age of taking functionality away. Back in the 80's VCRs had a backward function where you could fast run backwards and watch the video. Modern 'puters cannot do that even.
Much smarter people have walked the Earth and the new ones think they know all there is to know. Ignorance breeds confidence, IMO.
Leonardo and others showed the world what could be done. The information is all around us. We just have to tap into it. Just like musicians from the 60's, 70's, 80's made music that was original and creative. Today is mostly repetition and shit-fuck-motherfucker rap. Horrible. All research steals research from those who came before. Originality is criminalized. Look what the jews have done to us!
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday December 03 2019, @08:30AM (14 children)
Venice could pull the shit bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ponte_della_Costituzione.JPG [wikipedia.org] and put this one in its place. It would better fit the surroundings architectonically. Excess tourists could fall off the edge and be transported to the sea by the current... hopefully.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @08:59AM
Someone didn't want to spend any more than necessary on that one. Looks like a temporary construction until the real bridge is built.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday December 03 2019, @02:27PM (10 children)
Those are mutually contradictory. Those in wheelchairs can simply pretend the bridge doesn't exist, as if the lack of necessity had led to it not being built. (Or reversedly, the bridge must be necessary if wheelchair access to it is necessary.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday December 03 2019, @04:09PM (4 children)
Indeed they are, but probably they were formulated by different parties. It's an established tradition here to criticize stuff from all possible angles so that the target has no way to correct all the issues. Personally I hope it auto combusts (i know it's a near impossibility, but it was a near impossibility to come up with that design in the first place)
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday December 03 2019, @05:05PM (3 children)
Like it matters - one Zelts Tilts burns one hundred times what a delicate little venician bridge costs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bof-jA7GpGs
I wonder if bridge prices are correlated to the corruption perception index.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday December 04 2019, @09:33AM
3.6 megaeuro projected
11.3 megaeuro to actually deliver, late. Probably new spending will be done because it has structural flaws.
the architect gave the project for free, (which is nice, but probably they would have found architects willing to pay for the privilege though)
I see no mention of eu financing.
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(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday December 04 2019, @09:35AM (1 child)
Italy gives more money to the EU than it takes away from.
Politicians are not willing to do the footwork for many EU grants, maybe they want kickbacks to move or maybe they already got them not to move.
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(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday December 04 2019, @12:04PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Tuesday December 03 2019, @07:45PM (4 children)
Lack of necessity? How else are you going to get from the bus leaving town to the train leaving town?
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday December 04 2019, @09:39AM (3 children)
I don't recall people having to dive into the canal grande before the bridge was built though.
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(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday December 04 2019, @11:59AM (2 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday December 04 2019, @12:16PM (1 child)
a plunge in the canal helps washing the blood from the bloody wheelchair off.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday December 04 2019, @01:06PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday December 03 2019, @05:13PM (1 child)
Is this the one with glass steps that become difficult to navigate when wet?
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday December 04 2019, @09:45AM
Yes. It's not as slippy as polished stone, but you do feel uneasy descending from the bridge. Grooves and that kind of fuzzy tape they use for marble step would suffice, you would have to renew it often because many people step on it, but ofc they want to redo all with a different material.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @04:02PM (7 children)
I seem to recall several other groups building examples of this bridge over the years; this article seems to support that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vebj%C3%B8rn_Sand_Da_Vinci_Project/ [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by FatPhil on Tuesday December 03 2019, @05:11PM (3 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @10:10PM (2 children)
Seems that you didn't read far enough down the Wiki page,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vebj%C3%B8rn_Sand_Da_Vinci_Project [wikipedia.org]
*in this case contemporary with Leonardo in 1502.
.
The new bridge in Norway does not use stone as originally designed by Leonardo:
The MIT group also ran enough structural analysis to convince themselves that the full sized bridge as originally designed could only have been made (in 1502) from stone. The other available materials like wood or brick aren't strong enough for that long span.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday December 04 2019, @12:37PM (1 child)
Use of stone or not is pretty much irrelevant. Stone has a particular density, modulus, and strength. Other materials have their own too. These properties do not scale linearly - if you build a scale model, you are not building something that has the same load-bearing capability. Of course a tiny one made from a strong material works, it doesn't take MIT students to work that out (although apparently it does if you're an MIT student). A medium-sized one made from a less strong material - that's a much more interesting test of the design. The Norwegians were doing the experimental science here, and proving something, the MIT guys weren't.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 04 2019, @10:44PM
Late to this party.
I think you have missed the point of the MIT work. The goal was to see if this very flat arch could be made with individual blocks, cut at carefully calculated angles, not glued, bolted or otherwise attached to each other. Like early stone buildings and semi-circular arches, gravity and friction-on-the-joint-faces is all that holds the MIT model together. Clearly there is a limit for this construction technique--a flat bridge can not be built from individual blocks! Thus there is some limit to how flat an arch can be and still work. Since the model worked, Leonardo's original should also work (had it been funded), thus the original design was "vindicated".
Use of other materials like steel or wood allows the joints to be easily attached to each other and the internal structure/geometry can take many forms (while maintaining the same general proportions of the flat arch).
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Tuesday December 03 2019, @07:50PM (2 children)
Your link got mangled. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vebjørn_Sand_Da_Vinci_Project [wikipedia.org]
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday December 04 2019, @09:47AM (1 child)
hm try cut and paste en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vebjørn_Sand_Da_Vinci_Project in your browser address bar
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(Score: 3, Funny) by Bot on Wednesday December 04 2019, @09:51AM
from the finally working link:
Other permanent da Vinci bridges have been proposed for several locations, although these plans have not come to fruition:
Des Moines, Iowa (1998),[20] rejected as the design was said to be "too modern"[21]
hahaha
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(Score: 2) by Alfred on Tuesday December 03 2019, @06:59PM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 04 2019, @12:33AM
Yeah, they don't even show the resulting bridge - just a quick shot of part of it with one of the students. What they do show are pictures of many other bridges. But those aren't what we went to the video to see.
Disappointed. :(
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday December 04 2019, @09:55AM
Yeah this is not a video it's a 2 min denial of service attack on the viewer.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @07:20PM
"There is also a 2 minute video (but I'm sure no one here will bother to watch it!)"
posts youSlave link