Test of China’s glass bridge a smashing success
Given that China seems to have overinvested in glass bridges over the past year or so, it’s pretty important that they establish that the bridges are, you know, safe to walk on.
And so, a brilliant plan was devised: Invite tourists onto a bridge and have them smash it with a sledgehammer.
On Saturday, roughly 30 visitors were brought onto the bridge at the Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon in Hunan province, given 12-pound sledgehammers and told to have at it, Xinhua reports. Supposedly both the longest (1,411 feet) and the highest (984 feet, above-ground) glass bridge on the planet, the Zhangjiajie bridge completed construction in spring 2016 and is apparently able to withstand the weight of 800 people at once. Originally slated to debut to the public in May, rainfall has pushed its opening date back to July.
Thankfully, none of the sledgehammer-ers managed to collapse the bridge before it even opened, but many of them did leave cracks in the top layer of the glass. (The bridge has three layers of glass, and each layer is 15 mm, or 0.6 inches, thick.) To further prove the point, after 20 tourists left their marks on the bridge, a Volvo SUV weighing 2 metric tons (4,409 pounds) and containing 11 passengers drove over the cracked panels. Then, the final 10 took their turns.
“Even if the glass cracks, it will not break into pieces,” said Chen Zhidong, an official at the park. “Pedestrians can still walk on it.”
Publicity events like these have been staged in order to assuage potential visitors after cracks were discovered in a different Chinese glass bridge last year, causing a small panic.
Earlier this month, BBC Click reporter Dan Simmons was given a similar chance to test the safety of the bridge — though he was merely allowed to smash a separate panel, not the actual bridge. His first strike shattered the top layer, but even after more than a dozen blows, the bottom two layers were undamaged.