• Science

    The Indestructible Bridge

    By Abby Seiff Posted on 5.13.2008 4 Comments

    Hillman Composite Beams $500,000 Time: 12 years
    Prototype | | | | | Product Last November, John Hillman stood beneath a bridge built with prototype plastic-and-concrete beams of his own design. Then he signaled for his team to release a nine-million-pound coal train. “You can do all the calculations you want; you can do tons of lab testing. But at the end of the day, you run a heavy-axle coal train over the bridge, and that pretty much tells you whether or not it’s gonna hold,” Hillman says. It didn’t budge.


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