Slicing a Bridge Like Butter

I was going to have a blog about my deep skeleton tour of the Columbus Auditorium I had with Dale the esteemed leader of the CAC and my brother the Historical Preservation Architect dude, but I think I'll wait and let some thoughts percolate a little. Why rush something if things are still floating around in your brain.

Then I was going to write a huge piece on Public Enemies but . . . . nothing is happening in Chicago, at least not that I have heard.

Seems Herenotthere girlfriend broke up with him over at IMdb and I am truly sorry to hear that. It SUCKS!

I read an article about National Geographic Photographers a few years ago. Did you know that 90% of them get divorced? Having a job where you are on the road a year at a time away from loved ones is a real deal breaker in most relationships and while you would think being a crew member on a movie sounds exciting there are very big drawbacks.

So that leaves me with a little engineering story problem and then a couple odd facts about the Columbus city Hall.
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Remember story problems? How you hated them in school because they, well, THEY SUCKED?

Here is a little story problem my brother's son had in engineering school in Illinois.
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A Backhoe weighing 8 tons is on top of a flatbed trailer and heading east on Interstate 70 near Hays, Kansas. The extended shovel arm is made of hardened refined steel and the approaching overpass is made of commercial-grade concrete, reinforced with 1 1/2 inch steel rebar spaced at 6 inch intervals in a criss-cross pattern layered at 1 foot vertical spacing.

Solve: When the shovel arm hits the overpass, how fast do you have to be going to slice the bridge in half? (Assume no effect for headwind and no breaking by the driver...)
See pictures if you need some visual aid in solving the problem.

Extra Credit: Solve for the time and distance required for the entire rig to come to a complete stop after hitting the overpass at the speed calculated above.

The first photo shows the end result from below

The second photo is of the top view

And you thought YOU were having a bad day.

I think the bottom photo was taking from the other side of the bridge. It looks like the arm caught the bridge at an angel that raised it higher as it sliced the bridge.
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After the skeletal tour of the Auditorium we were outside and the below photo has a few interesting things many people do not notice.

First is the fire escape. It does not actually meet the ground does it. I guess fire escapes are a thing of the past and are now forbidden. This one's story (no pun intended) is that the metal for the bottom half was used for WWII. Also used were some really nice looking fountains that were situated around th City Hall.

Also - there are three groups of windows on the bottom left. If you look closer they were actually large doors.

Those doors were for the horses. They needed a team of horses to raise the piano up and down from the stage and other heavy lifting. COOL!!

I'll have more on City Hall tomorrow - what an amazing building and from what I was told is in very well preserved shape (except for the roof). I even got to see the inside workings of the clock and I hope I'll have permission to post some photos of the guts of the time piece.

So for me - it's off to the flower Factory in Oregon for my last bunch of butterfly/bee perennials plus some sort of purple climbing Clematis for the lamp post!

BIRD ALERT - I was 1 second away from having a photo of a big orange Baltimore Oriole at our feeder yesterday! ARG!!!!
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Side note - do to demand, if you are looking to purchase that photo of downtown Columbus that I posted yesterday just click on the PayPal Donate Button. It's an 8x12 in photo.

20% will go towards the Auditorium. $10 +$1 shipping/handling and additional overcharge. Paypal gives me the address and I'll get one in the mail - OR - better yet - head to Julies Java House and get one first hand and have a cup of Joe while you are there.

Have a great Sunday

Rod