Office Spam™

The photo was taken on the day of inauguration. To those who appreciate engineering projects, here's a puzzle for you armchair engineers and physicists.
Did that bridge have to be designed to withstand the additional weight of ship and barge traffic, or just the weight of the water?
Answer:
It only needs to be designed to withstand the weight of the water! Why? A ship always displaces an amount of water that weighs the same as the ship, regardless of how heavily a ship may be loaded

This nifty piece of Office Spam was submitted by a chattanooga wedding photographer.

Water bridge in Holland. Have a look at this site !

http://aquaduct.hobbysite.info/nednieuw.html

Greetings, Jan.

Amazing engineering work!

Be able to support that amount of water is an incredible feat. The water would surely have to be at least a good five feet to allow those boats. Hopefully that bridge doesn't have any unlucky times (imagine a collapse).

response to physics question: whether or not the bridge must be designed to support the "extra" weight of the ships and barges depends on the boundary conditions. if the bridge water is enclosed, as in a true bath-tub, then the water level is higher when the water is displaced by a boat, the hydrostatic head is correspondingly greater, and the bridge must support the additional weight. if the ends are open, then the water level remains constant, and, ignoring second order effetcs, the hydrostatic head, and hence the weight to be supported, remains constant. if a boat sinks, the water level goes DOWN, and the weight to be supported diminishes!

Amazing engineering work!

how do the bridge sucks the displaced water. is there any pumping mechanism to pump the amound of displaced water back once the ship reaches its destination?

All praise be to Allah who gave Mankind the intelligence and ability to do wonders on this Earth! Glorified is Him.

After that, congratulations on your great efforts! You've done it, with Allah's Grace.

The bridge will have to be designed to take ore weight than the water itself. When we put anything in a water body there is an addition to the total weight (though less than the original wt of the body in air). Hence any addition of mass will increase the total weight.

this is a nice