full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Ian Firth: Bridges should be beautiful

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Well, I want to tell you about something which I think is really extnicig. This is a multispan suspension bridge across very deep water in Norway, and we're wnrikog on this at the moment. The deep water means that foundations are prohibitively expensive. So this bridge foltas. This is a floating, multispan snopseiusn bdigre. We've had floating bridges before, but nothing like this. It stands on floating pontoons which are tethered to the seabed and held down — so, pulled down against those buoyancy fcreos, and in order to make it stable, the tops of the towers have to be tied together, otherwise the whole thing would just wobble around and nobody will want to go on that. But I'm really excited about this because if you think about the paecls around the world where the water is so deep that nobody has given a second thought to the possibility of a bridge or any kind of crossing, this now opens up that possibility. So this one's being done by the Norwegian rados Administration, but I'm really excited to know where else will this technology enable development — that growing together, that blndiuig of community.

Open Cloze

Well, I want to tell you about something which I think is really ________. This is a multispan suspension bridge across very deep water in Norway, and we're _______ on this at the moment. The deep water means that foundations are prohibitively expensive. So this bridge ______. This is a floating, multispan __________ ______. We've had floating bridges before, but nothing like this. It stands on floating pontoons which are tethered to the seabed and held down — so, pulled down against those buoyancy ______, and in order to make it stable, the tops of the towers have to be tied together, otherwise the whole thing would just wobble around and nobody will want to go on that. But I'm really excited about this because if you think about the ______ around the world where the water is so deep that nobody has given a second thought to the possibility of a bridge or any kind of crossing, this now opens up that possibility. So this one's being done by the Norwegian _____ Administration, but I'm really excited to know where else will this technology enable development — that growing together, that ________ of community.

Solution

  1. building
  2. exciting
  3. places
  4. bridge
  5. floats
  6. working
  7. forces
  8. suspension
  9. roads

Original Text

Well, I want to tell you about something which I think is really exciting. This is a multispan suspension bridge across very deep water in Norway, and we're working on this at the moment. The deep water means that foundations are prohibitively expensive. So this bridge floats. This is a floating, multispan suspension bridge. We've had floating bridges before, but nothing like this. It stands on floating pontoons which are tethered to the seabed and held down — so, pulled down against those buoyancy forces, and in order to make it stable, the tops of the towers have to be tied together, otherwise the whole thing would just wobble around and nobody will want to go on that. But I'm really excited about this because if you think about the places around the world where the water is so deep that nobody has given a second thought to the possibility of a bridge or any kind of crossing, this now opens up that possibility. So this one's being done by the Norwegian Roads Administration, but I'm really excited to know where else will this technology enable development — that growing together, that building of community.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
suspension bridge 5
long time 3
durable material 2
technological change 2
bridge collapse 2
twisting motion 2
step change 2
messina bridge 2
main cables 2
sea crossing 2
multispan suspension 2
deep water 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
multispan suspension bridge 2

Important Words

  1. administration
  2. bridge
  3. bridges
  4. building
  5. buoyancy
  6. community
  7. crossing
  8. deep
  9. development
  10. enable
  11. excited
  12. exciting
  13. expensive
  14. floating
  15. floats
  16. forces
  17. foundations
  18. growing
  19. held
  20. kind
  21. means
  22. moment
  23. multispan
  24. norway
  25. norwegian
  26. opens
  27. order
  28. places
  29. pontoons
  30. possibility
  31. prohibitively
  32. pulled
  33. roads
  34. seabed
  35. stable
  36. stands
  37. suspension
  38. technology
  39. tethered
  40. thought
  41. tied
  42. tops
  43. towers
  44. water
  45. wobble
  46. working
  47. world