Interstate ho(e)

[sigma7]

I love it when e-mails my sister forwards to me get Snopesed. This time, though, she was actually right.

A hoe weighing 8 tons is on top of a flatbed trailer and heading east on Interstate 70 near Hays, Kansas. The extended shovel arm is made of hardened refined steel and the approaching overpass is made of commercial-grade concrete, reinforced with 1 1/2 inch steel rebar spaced at 6 inch intervals in a criss-cross pattern layered at 1 foot vertical spacing.

Solve: When the shovel arm hits the overpass, how fast do you have to be going to slice the bridge in half? (Assume no effect for headwind and no braking by the driver.)

Extra Credit: Solve for the time and distance required for the entire rig to come to a complete stop after hitting the overpass at the speed calculated above.

Comments

[robing.livejournal.com]

Several questions come to mind, but the first is, "How do you underestimate by THAT much?" I mean, we're not talking "I was off by six inches and scraped the underside of the bridge" here. I know the state of math education is pretty poor, but ...damn.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking/hoping/praying that they raised the hoe after the accident. Either that or this was the first overpass they came to, because I don't think there's an overpass with that much clearance this side of Kansas City....

[aardy.livejournal.com]

I think the boom was only a couple feet high at the instant it hit the bridge, but was pointed towards the direction of travel, and got pushed up and back as the truck bed moved further than the concrete permitted the boom to move. If you look closely, you can see that the guardrail on the overpass is still intact, even though it's lower than the height at which the boom ended up, and the hydraulic pistons at the base of the boom look to be royally bent.

[rewil.livejournal.com]

It's kinda neat, driving under it the last time I went home — an entire section of the bridge was still gone, but it's not a neat hole, with raggedy rebar sticking out and all. Kinda looked like Godzilla stomped through the bridge, but then the AP coverage would have been more extensive.

(If the driver'd entered I-70 from the main Hays exit, this would have been the first bridge he came to.)(Or she, but if it were a woman driver I imagine I'd've heard the jokes by now.)

(Story. And another. Hee, pic.)

[bishop282.livejournal.com]

I have Snopes in my RSS reader and noticed this yesterday. I sent the Snopes link to my FHSU alumni brothers and one of them sent back an e-mail his friends had sent to him. It had some different pictures than the ones at Snopes. This one shows the other end of the bridge and it appears that the bucket hit front. Maybe it caught and threw the boom up through the bridge.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v702/bishop282/HallStreetI-70Bridge007.jpg)