1 February 2022 – I said this about the Burrard Bridge some years back and it’s still true: I stare at a bridge and I think, this is geometry made visible.
I’m on the north side of False Creek, under access ramps for the Cambie Street bridge. I look up and there it is, right before my eyes, visible and tangible. Geometry.
If that seems more than a tad artsy-precious, I can point to sober old Encyclopedia Britannica for validation. Geometry, it tells us, is “the branch of mathematics concerned with the shape of individual objects, spatial relationships among various objects, and the properties of the surrounding space.”
Shapes and relationships!
Here, for example…
and here (with some bike geometry thrown in to keep the bridge company)…
and also here, marching south to cross False Creek.
I turn back north, then angle my footsteps to go spiral my way up the pedestrian/cyclist access ramp on this eastern side of the bridge.
Oh.
Right! Time to find the pedestrian access for the other, west side of the bridge — which I haven’t used in a couple of years, but know is sprawled at some distance from this side.
Fortunately, I am capable of following arrows, when sufficiently large and vivid.
Even when they require me to turn left and then turn left again.
And here I finally am, heading south mid-bridge, with all these parallel lines yearning to converge at infinity, should we grant them sufficient time and space.
But we don’t.
I am soon dog-legging my way back down to ground just as a runner starts his upward climb.
Street-side, signage tells me what the closures are all about. Text explains the need for structural repairs and seismic upgrades …
while bold red lines trace the ramps, the bridge, and their fit with each other and with the cityscape either side of False Creek.
“Spatial relationship among various objects, and the properties of surrounding space.” Thank you, Britannica.
WALKING WOMAN 
jeffreymillerca
/ 2 February 2022Yes. I’ve always thought that our teachers should take us into the world with our books. The bridge makes geometry concrete (pun intended, recalling my favourite book title of all time: “Here’s Looking at Euclid”). Taking a field trip to the bridge and assigning proofs based on the outing, we’d get no more “But what’s the point of this? I’m never gonna use it in my actual life!”
Lynette d'Arty-Cross
/ 2 February 2022A wonderful post, Penny. I don’t think that you’re being artsy-precious at all. It IS geometry made visible. My grade 11 math teacher used to say that art was math and math was art and carefully demonstrated what he meant. He was an amazing teacher who opened my eyes to what math really means.