Why Are Bridges Built? - Explanation

Why Are Bridges Built?

This isn’t about tunnels, nor is it about towers, but instead bridges. We cross many of them everyday. But have you ever thought about why we have bridges? It's a question we don’t really think about, and don’t necessarily know the answer too.

First of all, why are bridges built? These wonderful structures help us connect in many ways with different people and places. Bridges are built to carry traffic from obstructed places where you can’t build a road, (for example over rivers and lakes). They provide a pathway from two separate locations, and allow you to pass by the things that obstruct your routine.

Secondly bridges are constructed out of many different materials such as: iron, stone, wood, concrete and plastic. So there are many different types of bridges at different strength levels. Bridges made out of wood is the least strongest among the rest of the materials and steel would be the strongest. So more people would use steel as opposed to wood.

Lastly, what would we do without bridges? If we had no bridges we would have not be able to go over lakes, rivers and large ponds. We would need to use helicopters, boats, airplanes and subways. For example; back in 1857 before the Panmure Bridge was built, people used a small floating platform called a punt. This was not very stable, it would usually leak and it needed a lot of repairs. The people were really frustrated and it influenced them to write a petition to build the a bridge over the Tamaki River.

Bridges, bulky brilliant structures all around us. We cross many of them everyday, when we are going to school, work or shopping. This why we need bridges, without them it would not be same, and we would not we able to go to places as easy as we can today.

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This week for writing we have been looking at explanation. Since our topic for inquiry is structures we were to write our explanation about why are bridges built? In our explanation we were not aloud to use a rhetorical question as our hook because we have used it a lot in the past. So I chose to do my hook as what its not. We also needed to have a colon and a semi colon in our piece of writing. I learnt that back in 1857 before the Panmure Bridge was built, people used a small floating platform called a punt.