Homeandgarden: PBS series explains how bridges bridge

[Photo: PBS]
Ever wonder how really big bridges and other spectacular structures stay standing? Building Big, a five-part PBS series, begins Tuesday.

A five-part series that starts at 8 p.m. Tuesday on WEDU-Ch. 3 will explain how some of the world's major engineering accomplishments were created: bridges, domes, skyscrapers, dams and tunnels.

Building Big: A Miniseries on Megastructures is hosted by David Macaulay, author-illustrator of The Way Things Work, Cathedral and other books.

Macaulay scrambles up, over, around and through spectacular structures, explaining how bridges span great chasms, how dams hold back gigantic lakes, how skyscrapers reach the sky, how domes hold themselves up and how tunnels penetrate mountains and work their way under riverbeds.

In Tuesday's hourlong premiere, Macaulay ranges from the stone arch bridges of the Roman Empire to Japan's giant all-steel Akashi-Kaykyo suspension bridge, the longest in the world, as he explains how bridges work and why they sometimes don't. He visits the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to show newsreel footage of the death dance and collapse of the infamous "Galloping Gertie." At the Brooklyn and Golden Gate bridges he shows how engineers have built bigger bridges with better construction materials and innovative designs.

Local footnote: The Brooklyn Bridge was built by John Augustus Roebling, whose grandson Donald, himself a noted engineer, built Roebling Manor, a mansion on Clearwater Harbor, between 1929 and 1935.

Of all the structures he visited in the course of producing the series, Macaulay says the Golden Gate Bridge was "one of the most impressive and wonderful places." He describes taking a two-person elevator to the top of the tower. "Looking down, about 200 feet below, you see the fog flying by; another 200 feet below that you see the roadway and the cars going back and forth; and another 200 feet below that you see a boat going underneath the bridge -- all in patches because of the fog. And if you look out you see the line of the cables disappearing into the cloud bank."

Future installments, all at 8 p.m., deal with domes, Oct. 10; skyscrapers, Oct. 17; dams, Oct. 24; and tunnels, Oct. 31.

A companion book by Macaulay, Building Big (Houghton Mifflin, $30), is available to coincide with the series.

The series also has a Web site, http://www.pbs.org/buildingbig. A databank of structural marvels is available there, as well as interactive simulations of engineering principles and Macaulay's sketches and field notes.

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