Millennium Bridge

Yes, I'm...

Beside the water, I'm overlooking the Thames and Millennium Bridge and the Tate Modern.

So it's very nice.

It's nice to be in a very convenient central London location.

that balcony.

Walked across the Millennium Bridge.

Oh, was it wobbling? You've not

done that before? No.

the...

Millennium Bridge is the best

bridge, of course.

Well, unless you're trying to cross it and it goes up.

And you just don't get that in a science.

For example, when the Millennium Bridge that goes over the Thames in London wobbled in 2000, nobody wrote to the Queen saying, "The physics of the bridge had turned out to be a matter of the imagination.

I'm so sorry, Queen.

It was wizards.

It doesn't really matter.

The Millennium Bridge as well.

That was the other one I remember.

Yep, so that's late, and it closed again after two days, wobbling so badly it took 19 months to fix.

I mean, correct me if I'm wrong.

But I, unbelievably, I end up working for a company, this is, like, in my kind of gap year, working for a company involved in the Channel Tunnel.

They were all making this joke around the office when I was there as, like, this little intern making the teas, and they were like, "How do you shake hands with someone from Ove Arup?" Which was the company that built the Millennium Bridge, and you'd do this.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

The building's engineer, William LeMessurier, quietly arranged for emergency welding repairs to be carried out overnight during a hurricane season, and the crisis was not made public until 1995.

The Millennium Bridge in London, opened in June 2000, had to be closed after just two days because it swayed alarmingly when crowds walked across it.

The movement was caused by pedestrians unconsciously synchronizing their steps to the bridge's wobble.

The bridge was fixed with thirty-seven fluid viscous dampers and fifty-two tuned mass dampers, reopened in 2002, and has not wobbled since.

People are good, God is good, but our systems often do ...

The best way I've ever heard this described is, um, the Millennium Bridge in London-

Mm-hmm

... opened on millennium, I think.

London, June 2000.

A new Millennium Bridge opens across the Thames.

It's the

first new Thames crossing in central London since Tower Bridge.

Left, step, right.

When London's Millennium Bridge began to wobble uncontrollably shortly after its opening in the year 2000 They fall into lockstep.

This phenomenon was initially thought to be the cause.

Step, step, left, left.