Suspension Bridges...?

Each tower consists of a pair of hollow vertical concrete columns, each 155.5 metres (510 ft) tall and tapering from 6 metres (20 ft) square at the base to 4.5 metres (14.8 ft) x 4.75 metres (15.6 ft) at the top. The bridge is designed to tolerate constant motion and bends more than 3 metres (10 ft) in winds of 80 miles per hour (129 km/h). The towers, although both vertical, are not parallel, being 36 millimetres (1.4 in) further apart at the top than the bottom as a result of the curvature of the earth.[1]

the bridge-builders are in on the conspiracy and just made the 36mm figure up.  or, the people that reported it just made it up as part of the conspiracy.  those guys - they are really on top of things.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humber_Bridge

Quote

Each tower consists of a pair of hollow vertical concrete columns, each 155.5 metres (510 ft) tall and tapering from 6 metres (20 ft) square at the base to 4.5 metres (14.8 ft) x 4.75 metres (15.6 ft) at the top. The bridge is designed to tolerate constant motion and bends more than 3 metres (10 ft) in winds of 80 miles per hour (129 km/h). The towers, although both vertical, are not parallel, being 36 millimetres (1.4 in) further apart at the top than the bottom as a result of the curvature of the earth.[1]

Just a question...

With the incredible weight and torque and everything, wouldn't it be an undue amount of stress to put on the structure, just to perpetuate the "round earth myth?" 

I take it you don't believe in elevation?

I want one of the "big guys" to answer this one.  Come on, there's supposed to be nearly NO ONE in on this conspiracy!  Now, we have one man supposedly creating all the GPS user systems in the world, three guys at NASA creating many thousands of pictures (if not millions)... If we need a separate guy for every little incident like this one, that's going to add up!

I've spoken to civil engineers who claim that discrepancies in large structures to compensate for the "curvature of the Earth" are largely bogus - they're in the textbooks, but when it actually comes to building stuff nobody takes it into account.

Yup, essentially, it's easier and more reliable to lump a heap of reinforcement bars in there than to trust the contractors to get it right to less than half a percent. Most modern structures are over-engineered anyway to allow contractors to cock-up by a couple of percent either way. 36mm on such a large structure simply wouldn't be noticed

Quote from: Chris Spaghetti on December 22, 2007, 07:30:38 AM

Yup, essentially, it's easier and more reliable to lump a heap of reinforcement bars in there than to trust the contractors to get it right to less than half a percent. Most modern structures are over-engineered anyway to allow contractors to cock-up by a couple of percent either way. 36mm on such a large structure simply wouldn't be noticed

So basically it doesn't constitute any kind of proof of anything.

How about people check multiple suspension bridges? If it turns out that the difference in the distance between the top of the pillars is always more than the bottom, well, that is pretty solid evidence for the RE theory. However, if it is found that the bottom of the pillars is sometimes further apart than the top, and this consistency is random, then that is pretty good evidence for the FE theory.

Agreed?

rom the centre of the columns or the edge? because they're usually tapered

i don't think anyone is claiming that all or most suspension bridges are built to take the earth's curvature into account.  i'm sure it wouldn't affect a short bridge too much to not even bother with that in the equation.  the tolerances of materials and design should more than accommodate it.  or so i (the non bridge engineer) would think.

I was a civil engineer for about 2 years, with about 6 months of that spent in the bridges department. I don't claim to know a great deal, but I can say that the 36mm difference between top and bottom would be near impossible to achieve on-site