This month marks the 75th anniversary of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse. During a gale on Nov. 7, 1940, the bridge exhibited remarkable oscillations before collapsing spectacularly (Figs. 1–5). Physicists over the years have spent a great deal of time and energy studying this event. By using open-source analysis tools and digitized footage of the disaster, physics students in both high school and college can continue in this tradition. Students can watch footage of “Galloping Gertie,” ask scientific questions about the bridge's collapse, analyze data, and draw conclusions from that analysis. Students should be encouraged to pursue their own investigations, but the question that drove our inquiry was this:
When physics classes watch modern video showing the oscillations and the free fall of the bridge fragments, are these scenes sped up, slowed down, or at the correct speed compared to what was observed by the eyewitnesses on Nov. 7, 1940?