I. Decide whether the following statements are true or false according to the text:

1. The Sunshine Skyway is probably the best known of the several world's longest cable-stayed concrete bridges.

2. The bridge is famous because of its colour.

3. More than 300 precast steel segments were linked together with high-strength steel cables to form the roadway.

4. Large concrete islands, called dolphins, were installed to protect the new bridge from ships.

5. The pipes were painted a brilliant yellow to reflect the colour of taxicabs in the Sunshine State.

6. Forty-foot-wide roadways run on either side of the cables and the design enables drivers to have a safe moving.

7. A violent thunderstorm destroyed a four-mile steel cantilever bridge.

8. The bridge was named after Bob Graham Sunshine Skyway.

9. Engineers designed the bridge to lift apr. 200 feet above the water.

II. Answer the following questions:

1. Why is the Sunshine Skyway so popular and famous?

2. Why did building the bridge meet an opposition?

3. What was the main purpose to build the bridge after the war?

4. What can you say about the disaster in 1980?

5. What decision was made after the disaster? What would you have done if you had been a chief engineer?

6. What was the reason to use dolphins? What are they?

7. The Sunshine Skyway was renamed. After whom was it renamed? Why?

LANGUAGE FOCUS

III. Match the meanings of these terms with their definition:

1. a vertical structure which supports the ends of a multi-span superstructure at a location between abutments. 2. mixture of gravel, sand, cement, and water 3. underground passage dug through a hill or under a road, river, esp. for a railway or road 4. great or sudden misfortune; catastrophe 5. a structural member which projects beyond a supporting column or wall and is counterbalanced and/or supported at only one end 6. the top surface of a bridge which carries the traffic

a. navigable part of a waterway b. broad curving inlet of the sea c. cast in its final stage before positioning d. amount usu. or actually carried e. hinder or neutralize by contrary action f. a harbour g. hanging, pendant h. to be in equilibrium

IV. Complete the table with the missing words:

noun	verb	adjective / participle
		suspended
	to span
	to replace
decision
		supplemental
support
		structural
	to construct

Choose any 6 words and make sentences with them.