Sarah GleasonYear8
        Report on an Arched Bridge near Toulouse

There is a nice bridge near me that I’ve only seen a few times, because I just moved in to a new house. It is built out of bricks and cement, and runs over a small creek. It is capable to holding cars and trucks, but also has a sidewalk on either side so people can walk and bike on it as well as drive.

It is an arch bridge, meaning that the compression is on the inside arch of the bride, and the tension is on the top of the bridge. The weight of the vehicle passing over the bridge compresses the gravity, pushing it down, thus being able to support very heavy and large trucks.

Here is a diagram of an arch bridge:

The blue arrows are the weight of the truck being pushed down to the ground, thus supporting the truck. The red arch is showing where the compression in the bridge is.

Since I don’t have a picture of this specific bridge myself, I found one that shows the type of bridge an arch bridge is: