20 of the world's most amazing engineering feats
21.07.2023 - 07:56
/ roughguides.com
/ Sean Pavone
It took forty thousand construction workers a decade to build one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, Itaipu Dam. At almost 200m tall, ten times as heavy and eighteen times the size of Hoover Dam, it’s the world’s largest operating hydroelectric facility in terms of annual energy generation (though the Three Gorges Dam beats it in terms of capacity).
© Shutterstock
The world’s largest irrigation project supplies 6.5 million cubic metres of fresh water – to coastal Libyan cities – from huge, ancient underwater reservoirs in the Sahara Desert. The immense project cost more than US$25 billion and uses 2820km of pipes and 1300 wells, most of which are over half a kilometre deep.
© Shutterstock
Linking Kobe on the Honshū mainland to Awaji, an island in Japan’s Inland Sea, Akashi Kaikyo is the world’s longest suspension bridge; the central suspended section is almost 2km long, and makes up half the length of the entire structure. It took two million workers and a decade to build, and the steel cable used to construct it would encircle the Earth just over seven times.
Akashi Kaikyo Bridge spanning the Seto Inland Sea from Awaji Island to Kobe, Japan © Sean Pavone/Shutterstock
The Skywalk is a horseshoe-shaped, glass-bottomed structure jutting out twenty horizontal metres over the side of the Grand Canyon, 1450m up from the canyon’s base. Opened in 2007, this technical masterpiece was constructed from special glass imported from Germany, on which people can safely walk to take in spectacular (and terrifying) views.
© nootprapa/Shutterstock
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The Qinghai–Tibet Railway is the first railway to connect Tibet to any other province. The railway boasts the world’s highest track at the Tanggula Pass section, a staggering 5072m above sea level. Constructing the railway at such altitudes, unsurprisingly, caused some problems, and air inside the train carriages is supplemented with extra oxygen to help keep passengers breathing normally.
© Shutterstock
The largest man-made archipelago in the world, the Palm Islands, in Dubai, take their name from the shape of the islands, rather than the flora on the islands themselves. Only Jumeirah Island is open to the public, where you can stay in a number of luxury resorts, built on 94 million cubic metres of sand and 7 million tons of rock.
Dubai Palm Jumeirah Island, Dubai © Delpixel/Shutterstock
The low-lying coastal plains of the Netherlands have historically been prone to terrible flooding. Through an enormous system of dams, the creation of 2318 square kilometres of land and the closing off of Zuiderzee Bay, the coastline is now vastly better protected, and the works have been jointly named one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.
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