Laingan.com

A fly-over bridge across rivers for cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles and so on to past by is very common nowadays. What about a water bridge across the rivers? I guess most of us have never seen or even heard of such water bridge existing in this world. 

I never knew there was a water bidge existing until I received an email from my friend, the GFF, who had forwarded the picture showing the magnificent engineering project of the water bridge in Germany. It is definitely an eye-opener for me to see and realise that it is possible to do wonders if one really has the heart to do something and to make it happen.

Here is a picture of the water bridge in Germany taken on the day of inauguration :

The water bridge is in fact a channel-bridge over the River Elbe and joins the former East and West Germany, as part of the unification project. It is located in the city of Magdeburg, near Berlin. 

The water bridge of Germany across the rivers costs around half a billion euros and it took six years to build. This massive project connects Berlin’s inland harbour with the ports along the Rhine river. At the centre of the project is Europe’s longest water bridge measuring at 918 metres. The huge tub to transport ships over the Elbe took 24,000 metric tons of steel and 68,000 cubic meters of concrete to build.

The water bridge of Germany is a gigantic engineering project of mankind. If you do appreciate engineering projects, here is a little puzzle for you as well as for the armchair engineers and physicists.

PUZZLE :
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.