Sketch drawing of the proposed San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (1913) from Overland Monthly, April 1913.

The Bay Bridge will be closed from September 3rd at 8:00 p.m. until the 8th at 5:00 a.m. During these 105 hours, Caltrans will perform an "essential and unprecedented construction feat."

It turns out there was a lot I didn't know about the Bay Bridge. Its official name, for example is not the Bay Bridge. It's "The James 'Sunny Jim' Rolph Bridge," after the California Governor who died in 1934, two years before the bridge opened (The Golden Gate Bridge opened 6 months later). Around 280,000 vehicles traverse the bridge every day—nearly $7 in bridge tolls per second; The Yerba Buena Tunnel that connects the eastern and western segments is the world's largest diameter bore tunnel; Much of the eastern span is supported by old growth Douglas Firs, driven into firm mud.

As construction grows increasingly noticeable, the new eastern section rising out of the bay, more people are wondering: How will it attach? What happens to the old bridge? What's with the retrofit of the western suspension? And what is this unprecedented feat of construction happening over Labor Day weekend?

The construction website, baybridge360, just received a Webby award in the Government category, and is worth a visit. Videos and slide shows are overlaid on a satellite image of the bay and provide answers to these and other engineering questions. There's a bit of Troy McClure style narration, epic synthesizer for the construction scenes, and techno pop for the fast-forward time lapse photography. At one point, the “Governator” dons a pair of terminator sunglasses for a ceremonial blowtorching.

The new site may be sleek, but some of the most interesting information is buried in the old stalwart: baybridgeinfo.org. The western span's retrofitting, completed in 2004, added some 17 million pounds of structural steel, and included new rollers between the roadway and the bridge supports. The new eastern segment (slated for rebuilding since a section collapsed in the 1989 Loma-Prieta earthquake) will include the world's longest Self-Anchored Suspension (SAS) bridge, connected to a pier-supported "Skyway" (elevated roadway over a mile of mudflats), sloping down to the "Oakland Touchdown."

The 2,047-foot asymmetric SAS will be supported by a single steel tower, embedded in rock, rising 525 feet above sea level. While most suspension bridges use a pair of cables, the new SAS employs a single cable, anchored on the east side, wrapped over and around the tower, and down to the west. The Skyway is supported by a set of steel pipes, driven 300 feet into deep bay mud by a massive hydraulic hammer.

Amidst the construction clamor, considerable attention is afforded to local wildlife. Dense columns of air bubbles helped dissipate shockwaves from the hammering to ease construction-related stress on local fish. For the birds, platforms under the new east span provide cormorant nesting habitat, and the crew is building a 500 square-foot island for the pleasure of the snowy egret and ruddy turnstone. And at the Oakland touchdown, a turbidity-controlling curtain was installed to protect eelgrass, which in turn serves as a filter, improving water quality.

So consider all this next time you lament the $4 bridge toll. The original 1936 toll, collected in both directions, works out to over $20 in 2009 dollars. The bridge is scheduled for completion in late 2013.

This 1928 home in Albemarle County, Virginia recently
underwent a renovation through the EarthCraft Virginia
existing homes renovation program. After the renovation,
electricity use dropped by 24% and energy costs dropped
by 42%.

Home Energy Magazine is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a special May/June issue. We're taking the opportunity to look back at the past several decades of energy policy in America, and look ahead to what may come. Here's a sneak preview of some of what we're thinking.

Alan Meier, Senior Executive Editor, and Steve Greenberg, Technical Editor, among others, lived through the first energy crisis precipitated by the Arab oil embargo in 1973 and its aftermath. They remember the sudden interest in energy efficiency and renewable energy; the proliferation of solar water heaters on the roofs of homes that broke down quickly, had no one trained to fix them, and have become rusted monuments to the best of intentions gone wrong; the sudden and short lived gain in the average car’s fuel efficiency. They also recall some major successes: the huge and lasting increase in appliance efficiency, especially refrigerators; the success of the Energy Star program; and California’s progressive Title 24 building standards.

Alan, in a yet-to-be-published editorial, has been musing on what will happen after the billions of dollars from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) have been spent on building and retrofitting more efficient and sustainable buildings. Will it be the same three steps forward, two steps back pattern that we’ve seen before? Not so, according to Alan, if we:

Steve came up with some powerful images to stimulate our thinking about the future of energy efficiency:

We've been on a ramp with a rather gradual (and usually upward, with notable exceptions) slope. Suddenly the ramp gets so steep it looks like a wall. If we make it to the new, much higher level, what does the terrain look like? Do we go off a cliff, completing a boom and bust cycle the likes of which we've never seen? Or is there a reasonable ramp down to a sustainable level?

I lived through the lines for gasoline, though I couldn’t yet drive. I've observed the resulting interest in miles per gallon instead of horsepower; the return to a horsepower-mentality; and the recent switch back to a concern about miles per gallon. My family had a great experience with our new-fangled heat pump in the early 70s. My Dad, an engineer and all-around handy man, first got me interested in how houses and cars work during that time. I guess I vote for a steep, but not impossible ramp up in efficiency, followed by a less intense, slow and gradual climb that continues for a long time, with sudden jumps due to new, undreamed of (or only just dreamed of) technology. The pressure will come from high energy prices and people starting to feel the real effects of global warming and unhealthy air. I don't think these things will change anytime soon.

America might be on the pinnacle of a great change–namely having the first black President of the United States. The democratic primary race is still competitive between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I was just in Washington, DC, over the President’s Day weekend and it was truly inspiring to see the support for Mr. Obama amongst people who before were apathetic to the political system. One friend felt that for the first time she was “not just voting for the lesser of two evils.” Yet, inspiring change is not uncommon in African American history. In continuance of the Famous African American Scientists blog in January, below are three more noteworthy and prominent African American pioneers in science and technology. Although their names might not be famous, their work continues to mold the way we live our lives today.

Dr. Daniel Hale Williams (1856 – 1931)
Physician
Williams was born in Pennsylvania. He helped support his family after his father died when he was nine. At first, he worked as a shoemaker’s apprentice. Then as a teenager, he learned to cut hair and became a barber. While working as a barber, he met Dr. Henry Palmer, who later became the Surgeon General of Wisconsin. Dr. Palmer took Daniel on as a medical apprentice; and helped him gain acceptance to medical school. Dr. Daniel Hale Williams graduated with his medical degree in 1883. Disillusioned with the second-class care for African Americans, he founded the Provident Hospital in Chicago in 1891, the first African American-owned hospital in the United States. He made history at Provident Hospital by performing the first successful open heart surgery in 1893. His patient James Cornish, injured from a knife wound, fully recovered and lived for another twenty years.

Percy L. Julian (1899 – 1975)
Chemist
Alabama-born Julian held a bachelor's degree from DePauw University. He was unable to procure a chemistry Ph.D. from Harvard University because of discrimination, and left after receiving a master's degree. He later received a Ph.D. from the University of Vienna in 1931. He became a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants. He gained over 130 chemical patents in his lifetime. The most notable patent was for the production of cortisone. For his contributions to medicine, he became the fist African American chemist inducted in the National Academy of Sciences.

Elijah McCoy (1844 – 1929)
Inventor
The son of escaped slaves from Kentucky, McCoy was born in Canada and educated in Scotland. Settling in Detroit, Michigan, he invented a lubricator for steam engines. It was patented in 1872. Lubricators were a boon for railroads. Trains could run faster with less need to stop for lubrication and maintenance, thus improving profit lines. McCoy improved on the lubricator design over his lifetime as well as amassing over 50 other patents. Lacking the revenue to manufacture his own lubricators, he sold the patents to employers until 1920 when he was able to open Elijah McCoy Manufacturing Company. It is still disputed today if the phrase “The real McCoy” was derived to compare McCoy lubricators to generic and inferior copies.

Cat Aboudara is the Special Projects Manager at California Academy of Sciences and works in the public programs division. The Academy is a wonderful fit for her because of her curiosity about the natural world and her experience in working with native California wildlife.

latitude: 37.7734, longitude: -122.454