Third Avenue Bridge, which connects New York’s the Bronx to Manhattan, got stuck in an open position due to the high heat on Monday.
FDNY officers arrived in boats and fired water at the structure to try and cool down the metal, which expanded after high temperatures in the city, officials say.
The incident caused major traffic delays during one of the hottest days of the year in New York but reopened on the same day.
Okay… so… Republicans… I know you’re not big on science, but the Earth is not supposed to get so hot that metal expands to the point that we can’t move a metal bridge that’s reliably moved for a very long time.
It’s NY, the Democratic city is falling apart because of the poor Democratic leadership and the socialism. Why do you guys keep trying to pigeon hole ‘GlObAl WaRmInG’ into everything! /s
Usually I don’t need the /s to figure it out, but I did here!
You’re not alone.
Damned DEI bridges!
Infrastructure in NY is crap, but unrelated to this particular bridge problem.
It probably just needs another coat of paint.
That will be 1 billion bill for mckinsey consulting
5 million to union labour and 1 million for paint!
Why do you unions destroy America?
The bridge is warming up from too much wokeness eminating from the city!!!
Lol you should never follow up poor NY leadership with /s regardless of the party in power. Them not thinking they needed to include extended magazines in the SAFE Act because they thought magazines were disposable and would phase themselves out as long as they couldn’t be sold, and the entire fucking legalization of recreational marijuana shit show should be more than enough to remove the /s and that’s all without including anything that shit for brains cuomo did lol
the Earth is not supposed to
I don’t think we get to say what the earth is “supposed to” do.
For most of the earths existence it wouldn’t be possible for humans to exist. I don’t think it really gives a shit about a bridge we built.
You’re denying humans are causing climate change, aren’t you?
Changing topics. Good strategy.
Not even a little bit. I fully believe humans are causing climate change. It is going to make life as we know it on this planet completely different in the very near future.
I still think the planet itself doesn’t give a shit, and claiming there is a way it is “supposed to be” is pretty narrow minded.
Changing topics? The comment you replied to was literally about humans causing climate change.
So no, I wasn’t changing topics.
But you’re right, the planet is a big ball of iron and doesn’t give a shit. I was using what we call on this iron ball “figurative language” in order to explain why this is bad for our species.
Here is a resource to help you with this concept we Earth humans came up with thousands of years ago: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/writing-101-what-is-figurative-language-learn-about-10-types-of-figurative-language-with-examples
I think we agree on most of the points here, and now we’re just getting defensive about tone, and details.
I was just trying to point out that nothing has a way it is supposed to be. There is what things are, and there is what we want. Yes you can use many of the features of our language to convince people of your opinion.
I myself don’t like the idea of personifying the planet then imbuing it with opinions so I made the comment I did.
You must be a joy on Earth Day.
Is official. 2024 is using early 2000 blockbusters movie’s plots now. What a bunch of lazy screenwriters.
Here, you now have free long distance on this phone. Forever.
What I want is to seize the trunkline Mr. Rat, but thanks anyway …
Not the same damage, nor the same cause.
Not the same Sun?
Not the same solar heat ray focused entirely on one bridge.
Tomatoes/ nuclear radioactive mutated Tomatos 🍅
… Pretty much the same 🤷♂️
Attack of the killer tomatos isn’t the same as a good Beefsteak
/j
Point taken 👍
We had a similar issue with an older bridge here in Gothenburg, Sweden. The fix was to install water sprinklers during the summer to keep the bridge from expanding too much.
What if we cooled it with the blood of climate change deniers?
Dumb question, but why is the water cooler than the bridge? Because it was underground? Or does the evaporation help because it’s endothermic?
It’s a good question. Steel is very good at absorbing and retaining heat. Water on the other hand isn’t. Metals in general have way better thermal conductivity than water.
Exposed to the sun at the same time, a piece of metal will warm up a few times faster than the water. I believe steels can be somewhere around 8-10 times less energy required than to heat a similar mass of water.
The water could even start out slightly warmer than the bridge. Evaporative cooling would also work here since there is plenty of ventilation around the bridge. But that can slow down based upon humidity level.
Because metals have way better thermal conductivity, they aren’t good at retaining heat.
Heating equal masses of steel and water the same amount takes exactly the same energy, it just might take longer for the insulator vs. the conductor.
Specific heat of liquid water is around 4. Steel is like .45-.50 or around there. So it would take 450-500 joules to increase 1kg of steel 1C. Would take around 4k joules to increase 1kg of water by 1C.
I entirely forgot about specific heat. I am an idiot.
Both. Even the river water below the surface will be cooler than steel that’s been sitting in the sun. And putting that cool water on the bridge absorbs some of the heat and is removed in evaporation, just like sweating.
Water also needs a substantial amount of energy to evaporate, hence it will sip some heat from the environment around it when it evaporates. Combined with the good thermal conductivity of steel, the bridge cools off.
You get a similar effect when walking out of a hot shower. The hot water evaporates and cools you down.
Touch the roof of a car in the sun. Shit’s hot.
Probably because the metal absorbed heat from sunlight and heated up considerably, but the water was room temp only.
Probably both. Definitely evaporation will remove the most heat if both substances are at the same temperature initially.
Not a bridge expert, or really any kind of expert, really. But railroad rails are laid with a little gap to account for thermal expansion of the rail on hot days. If the expansion is more than designed for, you get buckling like this. This bridge was probably also designed to account for thermal expansion to a certain degree. It seems like more and more of our infrastructure is starting to fail, encountering heat levels it was never expected to encounter. I wonder if failures like this and worse are going to become a common headline
According to Practical Engineering, tracks are no longer given a gap. The gap causes premature wear and excess noise. Instead, they lay the track under tension, and weld the joins between sections.
There is still a limit on how much heat they can handle before buckling, of course. I just thought that was a neat innovation.
This bridge was probably also designed to account for thermal expansion to a certain degree. It seems like more and more of our infrastructure is starting to fail, encountering heat levels it was never expected to encounter. I wonder if failures like this and worse are going to become a common headline
Bridge engineer here (not much experience, so I wouldn’t consider myself an expert, but I have more knowledge about it than the general public).
Your suspicions are correct, bridges are designed for thermal expansion. More of our infrastructure is starting to fail, and part of that is because it’s experiencing climate it was never designed for (heat, sea level rise, more drastic storm surges, etc). I would fully expect this to be a more common headline. At least for several more years, anyway. If the federal money from the infrastructure bill the US passed a few years ago runs out or is not allocated to the right structures, then this will only get more common. I don’t expect the Trump administration to champion an extension of these funds if they do run out. It was passed under Biden, after all.
As for this bridge in particular, this is a moveable steel bridge. The fact that it’s moveable means it is particularly sensitive to expansion (as well as salinity which causes rusting). Too much expansion, and the steel will get stuck in one position. In a typical steel bridge, if the thermal expansion exceeds what it was designed for, you end up getting higher stress levels in the steel as it pushes harder against the abutments. Usually this is alright in the short term, since we design these to withstand much higher stresses than it will ever likely experience. Repeated cycles of this, however, will cause fatigue failure (think of a paperclip or metal spoon snapping after you bend it back and forth a bunch).
Anyways, there you have it. I rambled for too long about this lol.
Thanks for this additional info; your comment was interesting
No problem! I just like bridges and sometimes can’t help myself lol.
Do you have a favourite bridge?
Edit: I don’t know many bridges, but I quite like the Millennium Bridge in Gateshead. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateshead_Millennium_Bridge) My dad took me and my siblings there when it opened. It was a big deal for the area and I was young enough to not understand why, so I looked at it real hard to try to understand why everyone was so hyped. I concluded that it was a pretty good bridge.
Rail is laid at a “neutral temperature” calculated from the min and max temperatures of an area. They want the rail to not pull apart in the cold or buckle in the heat. If average temperatures go up that calculated neutral temperature goes up so rail laid at a lower neutral temperature are more likely to buckle.
Ah, we’ve reached the collapsing infrastructure stage of climate change. Oh good.
At least it’s effecting people responsible for climate change and not small tribes on far out islands like has been up to this point.
There’s a “spinning” draw bridge that goes onto Gwynn’s Island in Virginia that they have to do this to. Not sure how new of a phenomenon that is but it’s been at least a few years now.
Not the same traffic backup as NYC, but crazy still.
Did they try puttin some ice on it? Jeez, talk about woke propaganda -_-
