Building Bridges

Eight Third Post: Building Bridges

Today I looked up the Smithfield Street Bridge and found an excellent article at: http://pghbridges.com/articles/PA2-01.htm. The bridge is actually a combination of 3 bridges, built at different times. It is Pittsburgh’s first river bridge. It has some interesting history.

I have tried my math problem and again it doesn’t work. Having a square describe a circle has some interesting applications, but I don’t know with the given of an arc that it can be solved by its own solution and not utilized Newton’s Method or change in the radius with Pythagorean Theorem. It is the same trouble as before with most solutions of circles relying on the radius. I think there is something to be found between the relationship of a 30 deg. and a 45 deg. angle. The 30 deg. angle is set at the center and the 45 deg is set the distance of 1 radius below, putting it at the lower quadrant. There may be some tricks here that have to deal with percent of the radius. Also were the angles cross (the 30 and 45) may have something to deal with length. (Note if this stuff doesn’t make complete sense it is because I have condensed my description into a single paragraph.)

Also, just because we haven’t found a way to determine the radius or square based on the arc doesn’t mean that there are not other simple measurements made by a square that are useful when working with a circle. This is just a problem to tinker with in spare time.