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-Keith Pelczarski
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To Engineer is Human
Just finished this excellent book on "The Role of Failure in Successful Design," as proclaimed in the subtitle. Author Henry Petroski uses the central premise that we learn more from one disaster than we do from hundreds of successful designs. He looks at the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse, the Kansas City Hyatt Regency skywalk collapse, the de Havilland Comet crashes, and the Hartford Civic Center roof collapse, which I remember being in the news when I was a kid. It's not a gloom and doom sort of thing, though. Rather, Petroski takes these examples as an opportunity to demonstrate some of the pitfalls of engineering design and to address topics like factor of safety, economy of materials, significant digits, and illusory precision of computers. In addition to examining failures, Petroski also tells the tale of the Crystal Palace, of which I had never heard.
Did you ever notice that "Tacoma Narrows" can also be read "Taco Man Arrows"? Makes you think, doesn't it?
All in all, the book is a great read if you have any interest in construction, design, engineering, or even if you're just fascinated by accidents. (If it's the last, I would kindly ask you to try to keep moving along the next time you see a crash on the highway. Keep it moving, people!)
:: Keith 15:26 [link] :: ::
