The Funny Bridges kit, designed by Ing. Radim Nečas, PhD. with contributions from Ing. Ivana Švaříčková, PhD., was developed as part of the project Technical Kindergartens, which was awarded the prize of the Technological Agency CR at the festival Czech Innovation 2011. Today the construction kit is making its way into the hands of eager enthusiasts – whether they are small children or students of the technical sciences.
The multipurpose use of the kit provides a way of understanding the principles underlying the behaviour of various bridge structures, including their basic static effect. The construction kit offers 14 models of real bridges (11 types of suspension bridge and 3 types of arched bridge) which are true copies of footbridges and bridges in both the Czech Republic and the United States. Modellers can build, for example, a footbridge across the Sacramento River in California or the bridge across the Swiss Bay at the Vranov Dam (Czech Republic).
The designers themselves say that to assemble bridge structures it is not necessary to have any specialist skills, which means the wooden kit can serve as a toy and as an educational tool in both professional and practical education. The kit also allows considerable room for expressing one’s own creativity in constructing other types of structure.
The public had the chance to see the Funny Bridges model this year at the International Civil Engineering Fair in Brno, held each year in the Brno Exhibition Grounds at the end of April. The kit was seen as part of the BUT presentation, on the stand of the Faculty of Civil Engineering.
Figure No. 1: International Civil Engineering Fair 2014, Brno, stand of BUT, Faculty of Civil Engineering
Visitors could see a footbridge assemblied according to the model of the real footbridge situated in Portland in Oregon, the USA. The real footbridge is made of a pre-stressed 0.44m thick band hung on two slanted arches with the spans of 73.50 m. The footbridge was built in 2006.
Figure No. 2: A model of a footbridge (Portland, Oregon, USA) presented at the International Civil Engineering Fair 2014 in Brno.
The Technology Transfer Office at BUT helped scientists with industrial protection in the Czech market. The structure and design of the construction kit are protected as Czech utility model No. 24734 and industrial models No. 35354 and No. 35350.
The first production series of the models has been on the market since May 2014. Other interesting photos of the structures of the various footbridges and bridges are available at the website: www.veselemosty.cz.
