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Bridge engineering must reconcile competing demands: structures need sufficient strength to bear traffic loads and environmental stresses, yet excessive material use raises costs and can itself add destabilizing weight. Suspension bridges address long spans by transferring load through cables to towers and anchorages, a design well-suited to crossing wide waterways where mid-span piers are impractical. Truss bridges, by contrast, distribute load through a framework of interconnected triangles, an arrangement prized for its efficient use of material relative to strength, making it common for shorter to moderate spans. Engineers must also account for dynamic forces such as wind-induced oscillation, a factor that gained public attention after a well-known mid-twentieth-century suspension bridge collapse caused by resonance with wind, prompting later designs to incorporate aerodynamic stabilizing features.