China is set to inaugurate the world’s highest and longest glass bridge in one of the best preserved national parks in the country. The glass-bottom bridge has been constructed across the Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon and is almost quarter of a mile long, nearly 1400 feet.
The glass way will be opened to the visitors in the next month, and the officials are currently prepping for the big launch. To reassure the prospective visitors about the sturdiness of the glass bridge, the bridge officials requested Dan Simmons from BBC Click to pay a visit to the high structure.
The officials know that the Chinese visitors to the glass bridge might be put off by the last year’s incident when a mug dropped by a tourist resulted in shattering of another glass bridge just two weeks after its grand opening in China. The walkway was immediately cleared and closed for repairs.
To prove that the glass bridge is sturdy enough to support hundreds of visitors simultaneously, Simmons was invited to take a few swings at one of the glass panels of the bridge using a sledgehammer. Since it is 2016, it is needless to say that the whole episode was documented as a video.
The Zhangjiajie bridge can definitely take a beating. Each section of the bridge has been constructed with three layered ultra-strong glass. For the test, one of the sections used in the construction of the glass pathway was elevated onto a platform right in the middle of the bridge.
With his very first blow, Simmons managed to shatter the top layer of the ultra-strong glass. However, the pieces of the broken glass were held together by the frame. The repeated blows of the sledgehammer were unable to crack the bottom two layers of the ultra-string glass, even when Simmons threw all his weight behind the swing.
The bridge manager encouraged Simmons to take the swings at the glass panel and proudly stood alongside him when he was unable to break through the final two layers. You can watch the entire episode below:
However safe it may sound, the perilous quarter-mile walk across the glass walkway with nothing but three layers of glass between you and a 1000- feet plunge to death is bound to give Goosebumps to many!