Etc...

The tech generation gap

In teaching a multimedia class at Glenoak High School in Canton, Ohio, Marc Biss has learned that his students, while familiar with iPods, MP3 players, DVDS, and HDTV, don't know much about seemingly outmoded forms of technology, such as mimeograph machines and microfilm. No one knows what they are. Most of Biss's students think a fuzz buster is a vacuum cleaner. And while some have seen rotary phones, because they say their grandparents still use them, he needed to explain what a 45 rpm record is. "You mean those giant black discs?" one teenager asked. "My parents have some in the basement."

The Millau Viaduct, France's breathtaking new bridge, is incredibly high - its highest pillar (1,125 feet) exceeds the height of the Eiffel Tower. It also boasts a longer center-to-center span between any two supports than any other cable-stayed bridge in the world, which is how bridge lengths are measured. Seven concrete pillars are used to support the 1.5-mile roadway as it stretches over the Rhone valley near Spain in southwest France. The longest cable-stayed bridges, with their location and length of their longest span in feet:

1. Millau Viaduct 1,122 ft. Millau, France
2. Sutong 1,088 Hong Kong
3. Stonecutters 1,018 Hong Kong
4. Tatara 890 Onomichi-Imabari, Japan
5. Pont de Normandie 856 Le Havre, France
6. Nanjing-3 648 Nanjing, China
7. Nanjing-2 628 Nanjing, China
8. Baishazhou 618 Wuhan, China
9. Qingzhou 605 Fuzhou, China
10. Yangpu 602 Shanghai, China - Helsinki University of Technology