Civil engineers tested on NOVA television show tomorrow evening

Bridge engineers should tune their televisions into PBS tomorrow (August 13) 8 p.m. to watch a special NOVA broadast in which their colleagues attempt to construct a version of the mysterious Rainbow Bridge in China.

The bridge’s blueprint derives from a 12th century Chinese scroll painting that depits life in the Song Dynasty around A.D. 1000. The design is neither an arch nor a beam, but a delicate hybrid of the two.

Though the engineering style has not been used in the Western world, the NOVA producers assembled a Western and Chinese team of engineers to try and build such a bridge on a river near Suzhou.