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Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down
In "The New Science of Strong Materials" the author made plain the secrets of materials science. In this volume he explains the importance and properties of different structures.
395 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
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December 28, 2017
Nothing has fallen on me since I read this book.
July 5, 2014
What an incredible book! The best layman's introduction to a scientific topic that I've read since Feynman's QED. The author is also hilariously British and doesn't waste an opportunity to rag on the French.
Much of what I write below is copied verbatim from the text, but am too lazy to identify what with appropriate quotes.
These notes constitute about the first 175 pages, I should get around to documenting what I learned in the back half at some point.
basic definitions
- Streess = s= load / area = MegaNewtons / meter^2
- Stress measures how hard atoms in a material are being pulled apart or pushed together
- Strain = e = increase of length / original length
- Strain is how far atams are being pushed or pulled
- Strength is the stress needed to break a material
- Young's modulous of elasticity ('E') = stress/strain
- Young's modulus aka stiffness
- Hooke's law says that all solids change their shape - by stretching or contracting - when a mechanical force is applied to it, and it is this change of shape that allows an object to push back
- Strength is not the same thing as stiffness (e.g. a biscuit is stiff but weak, steel is stiff ad strong, nylon is flexible (not stiff / low E) and strong, raspbery jelly is flexible (not stiff / low E) and weak
- resiliance is the ability to store train energy and deflect elastically under a load without breaking/causing permanent damage
- ductile materials are those that, when pulled in tension, have stress-strain curves that depart from Hooke's law, after which the material deforms plastically (think chewing gum
- Critical Griffith crack length is the point when a crack goes from being safe and stable to being self-propagating and very dangerous. = 2WE/(pi*s^2) where W=work of fracture in J/m^2, E = Young's modulous in Newtons/m^2, s = average tensile strength in the material near the crack in Newtons/m^2.
- work of fracture (aka toughness) is the quantity of energy requried to break a given cross-section of a material
- emulsions are drops of one liquid floating within antoehr liquid
- elastomers are materials who can extend to great strain, sometimes 800% (e.g., rubber)
- Poisson's ratio says that every material has a constant ratio of strain in one direction when a stress is applied creating strain in a perpindicular direction. q=e2/e1 where e1 = strain in the direction of s1 and
cracks
- material has stress "trajectories" running through it, which get concentrated (jammed up) at cracks or divots
- If a material has a stress s on it and develops a crack/notch with length/depth L and radius of r, then the stress at the tip is no longer s but instead is s(1+2sqrt(L/r)), which means a round hole will have stress of 3s but a corner, which has a low r and a large L can be much higher. This is why ships often break in two starting at corners in doors
- Cracks are even worse, because the radius of a crack is tiny making stress at the tip of the crack much higher than the stress elsewhere
- Sometimes you can concentrate stress by adding material, making a sudden local increase in stiffness (think new patch in old garment or thick plate of armor on the thin side of a warship). Stress trajectories here are diverted justas muchby an area which strains too little as it is by an are which strains too much, like a hole
energy
- one Joule is roughly the energy with which an apple would hit the floor if it fell from a table
anchient warfare
- A palintonton or ballista is much more effective than a trebuchet in doing work. trebuchets could only store about 30K joules of potential energy, while ballistas were ~10X that
- bows are dangerous to release without an arrow because there is nowhere for that energy to go but back into the bow
nature
- spiders webs have two different kinds of threads. long radial ones that carry the load of the structure and are 3X more stiff than the circumfrential threads, which do the work of catching bugs. These more resiliant threads are known as tension members
fracture energy
- Work of fracture is not the same as tensile strength, which is the stress (not the energy) needed to break a solid
- most structural solids (glass,pottery, cement,brick,stone) which we use in technology only require 1 Joule per square metre to break all the chemical bonds on any plane or cross section. these are known as brittle solids.
- we do not use brittle solids in applications where they are in tension for this reason. They don't have low tensile strengths (i.e. they need a low force to break them) but because they need only a low energy to break them.
- tough materials can have the same strength as a brittle material, but they are able to deflect stress much deeper into their material, increasing dramatically the work required to fracture the material. in other words, with tough materials, molecules living deep within the material absorb some of the sstress
- The energy needed to grow a crack comes from the release of strain energy in material that is separated by the crack. The release of strain energy tends to be over an area that is two triangles with one side the depth of the crack and the other side the exposed surface of the material. The area of released strain is the square of the depth of the crack, which means if a crack is length L then the strain energy release grows as L^2. Therefore, as a crack length grows from 0, the beginning of its life requires net consumption of energy (more energy put into it than released), but after a while the crack reaches a length where it net releases more energy than it absorbs. This length is called "critical Griffith crack length".
- The local stress at a crack's tip can be very high - much higher than the official tensile strength of the material. The structure will still be safe and not break so long as no crack or other opening is longer than the critical Griffith length.
- The length of a safe crack depends upon the ratio of the value of the work of fracture to that of the strain energy stored in th material, or inversely proportional to its resilience.
- Rubber will store a lot of strain energy but its work of fracture is low so the critical crack length is very short, which explains why baloons pop the way they do, in a brittle matter.
- One way to be resilient and tough is to be like cloth or backet work and wooden ships and horse-drawn vehicles. In these things the joints are more or less loose and flexibile and so energy is absorbed in friction
- In a really large structure like a ship or a bridge, we want to be able to put up with a crack at least 1-2 meters long with safety.
- the failure of a structure may be controlled, not by the strength, but by the brittleness of the material
- the toughness of most metals is reduced as the tensile strength increases. You can cheaply double the strength of mild steel by increasing the carbon content, but you would reduce the work of fracture by a factor of ~15. So if you double the working stress of a streucture this way, the critical crack length will be reduced by a factor of 15x2^2=60 (x2^2 is the two triangles on each side fo the crack). This means if the safe crack was originally 1 meter long, it will now measure 1.5cm
- But if you have a small object (like a bolt) you are ok with crack lengths that are very small, so we can use high strength metals and high working stresses more safely in small structures than in large ones. The larger the structure the lower the stress wch may have to be accepted in the interests of safety.
pressure vessels
- the pressure inside a spherical vessel is rp/2t where r= the radius of the vessel, p = pressure, and 2 = the shell wall thickness
- for a cylinder, the stress along the shell (i.e., longitudinally) is the same as that in a spherical vessel rp/2t
- teh circumferential stress in the shell of a cylinder is rp/t, meaning it is 2x the longitudinal stress, which explains why sausage skins split longitudinally when they are cooked because the skin can't handle the circumfrential stress
- this has effect in sailing, where chinese junk sails are rigged so that as wind pressure increasesthe radius of curvature diminishes and the tension force in the canvas remains roughly constant no matter how hard the winds may blow
- the only sort of elasticity which is stable under fluid pressures at high strains follow an exponential stress~strain curve (our veins and arteries operat under ~50% strain, and wouldn't work if they were under rubber-like straess-strain curves). This curve means you don't need much stress at first for any strain, but after a while the slope increases dramatically
- the heart works in that during the pumping (systolic) part of the cardiac cycle, much of the excess of high -pressure blood is accomodated by the elastic expansion of the aorta and of the larger arteries; this has the effect of smoothing the fluctuations of our blood pressure.
- the elasticity of the arteries therefore does the same job as the air-bottle affair which enegineers often attach to mechanical reciprocating pumps
- this is why, if artery walls stiff and harden with age, the blood-pressure is likely to rise
joints & fastenings
- a lapped joint creates stress concentrations at the two ends of the joint, which is why the strength of such joints depends mostly on their width and not the length of overlap between the two parts. This makes simple rivets very effective
- for rods screwed into an anchorage, nearly all of the laod is taken out by the first 2 or 3 threads near the surface, making any extra length of rod within the socket ineffective
- this is true when two components of the joint have simialr Young's moduli or when the rod/tension bar is less still than the material of its socket/anchorage. But if the rod or bar is substantially stiffer than the material into which one is trying to anchor it, the stress situation is often reversed and the concentration may exist mainly ata the bottom or inner end of the rod.
- riveted joints are heavier than welded joints, but they are also easier to inspect, and often act as crack-stoppers. Most importantly, riveted joints can slip a little and so redistribute the load
- rivet holes normally are punched then reamed. The reaming at the end makes the hole stronger and with fewer cracks that were made during the punch
- in theory a welded joint should be watertight, but seldom is. In practice, rivets are cheaply caulked, but that can't be donee with a welded joint, so instead a liquid sealing compound is injected under pressure into the weld.
surface tension
- tension in a liquid surface differs from Hookean tension in three aspects: 1. the tension force does not depend on the strain/extension but is constant however far the surface is stretched, 2. unlike a solid, the usrface of a liquid can be extended without breaking, 3. the tension force does not depend on the cross-sectional area but only upon the width of teh surface. The surface tension is just the same in a deep or "thick" liquid as it is in a shallow or "thin" one.
- so if two droplets join up to make one droplet of twice the volume, there is a net reduction in the surface area of the liquid and therefore the surface energy. So there is an energy incentive for drops in an emulsion to coalesce and for the system to segregate into to continuous liquids.
- if you want the droplets to remain separate and not coalesce, then you have to "stabilize the emulsion" so they repel each other. This can be done with electricity, which is why emulsions are affected by electrolytes like acids and alkalis
Much of what I write below is copied verbatim from the text, but am too lazy to identify what with appropriate quotes.
These notes constitute about the first 175 pages, I should get around to documenting what I learned in the back half at some point.
basic definitions
- Streess = s= load / area = MegaNewtons / meter^2
- Stress measures how hard atoms in a material are being pulled apart or pushed together
- Strain = e = increase of length / original length
- Strain is how far atams are being pushed or pulled
- Strength is the stress needed to break a material
- Young's modulous of elasticity ('E') = stress/strain
- Young's modulus aka stiffness
- Hooke's law says that all solids change their shape - by stretching or contracting - when a mechanical force is applied to it, and it is this change of shape that allows an object to push back
- Strength is not the same thing as stiffness (e.g. a biscuit is stiff but weak, steel is stiff ad strong, nylon is flexible (not stiff / low E) and strong, raspbery jelly is flexible (not stiff / low E) and weak
- resiliance is the ability to store train energy and deflect elastically under a load without breaking/causing permanent damage
- ductile materials are those that, when pulled in tension, have stress-strain curves that depart from Hooke's law, after which the material deforms plastically (think chewing gum
- Critical Griffith crack length is the point when a crack goes from being safe and stable to being self-propagating and very dangerous. = 2WE/(pi*s^2) where W=work of fracture in J/m^2, E = Young's modulous in Newtons/m^2, s = average tensile strength in the material near the crack in Newtons/m^2.
- work of fracture (aka toughness) is the quantity of energy requried to break a given cross-section of a material
- emulsions are drops of one liquid floating within antoehr liquid
- elastomers are materials who can extend to great strain, sometimes 800% (e.g., rubber)
- Poisson's ratio says that every material has a constant ratio of strain in one direction when a stress is applied creating strain in a perpindicular direction. q=e2/e1 where e1 = strain in the direction of s1 and
cracks
- material has stress "trajectories" running through it, which get concentrated (jammed up) at cracks or divots
- If a material has a stress s on it and develops a crack/notch with length/depth L and radius of r, then the stress at the tip is no longer s but instead is s(1+2sqrt(L/r)), which means a round hole will have stress of 3s but a corner, which has a low r and a large L can be much higher. This is why ships often break in two starting at corners in doors
- Cracks are even worse, because the radius of a crack is tiny making stress at the tip of the crack much higher than the stress elsewhere
- Sometimes you can concentrate stress by adding material, making a sudden local increase in stiffness (think new patch in old garment or thick plate of armor on the thin side of a warship). Stress trajectories here are diverted justas muchby an area which strains too little as it is by an are which strains too much, like a hole
energy
- one Joule is roughly the energy with which an apple would hit the floor if it fell from a table
anchient warfare
- A palintonton or ballista is much more effective than a trebuchet in doing work. trebuchets could only store about 30K joules of potential energy, while ballistas were ~10X that
- bows are dangerous to release without an arrow because there is nowhere for that energy to go but back into the bow
nature
- spiders webs have two different kinds of threads. long radial ones that carry the load of the structure and are 3X more stiff than the circumfrential threads, which do the work of catching bugs. These more resiliant threads are known as tension members
fracture energy
- Work of fracture is not the same as tensile strength, which is the stress (not the energy) needed to break a solid
- most structural solids (glass,pottery, cement,brick,stone) which we use in technology only require 1 Joule per square metre to break all the chemical bonds on any plane or cross section. these are known as brittle solids.
- we do not use brittle solids in applications where they are in tension for this reason. They don't have low tensile strengths (i.e. they need a low force to break them) but because they need only a low energy to break them.
- tough materials can have the same strength as a brittle material, but they are able to deflect stress much deeper into their material, increasing dramatically the work required to fracture the material. in other words, with tough materials, molecules living deep within the material absorb some of the sstress
- The energy needed to grow a crack comes from the release of strain energy in material that is separated by the crack. The release of strain energy tends to be over an area that is two triangles with one side the depth of the crack and the other side the exposed surface of the material. The area of released strain is the square of the depth of the crack, which means if a crack is length L then the strain energy release grows as L^2. Therefore, as a crack length grows from 0, the beginning of its life requires net consumption of energy (more energy put into it than released), but after a while the crack reaches a length where it net releases more energy than it absorbs. This length is called "critical Griffith crack length".
- The local stress at a crack's tip can be very high - much higher than the official tensile strength of the material. The structure will still be safe and not break so long as no crack or other opening is longer than the critical Griffith length.
- The length of a safe crack depends upon the ratio of the value of the work of fracture to that of the strain energy stored in th material, or inversely proportional to its resilience.
- Rubber will store a lot of strain energy but its work of fracture is low so the critical crack length is very short, which explains why baloons pop the way they do, in a brittle matter.
- One way to be resilient and tough is to be like cloth or backet work and wooden ships and horse-drawn vehicles. In these things the joints are more or less loose and flexibile and so energy is absorbed in friction
- In a really large structure like a ship or a bridge, we want to be able to put up with a crack at least 1-2 meters long with safety.
- the failure of a structure may be controlled, not by the strength, but by the brittleness of the material
- the toughness of most metals is reduced as the tensile strength increases. You can cheaply double the strength of mild steel by increasing the carbon content, but you would reduce the work of fracture by a factor of ~15. So if you double the working stress of a streucture this way, the critical crack length will be reduced by a factor of 15x2^2=60 (x2^2 is the two triangles on each side fo the crack). This means if the safe crack was originally 1 meter long, it will now measure 1.5cm
- But if you have a small object (like a bolt) you are ok with crack lengths that are very small, so we can use high strength metals and high working stresses more safely in small structures than in large ones. The larger the structure the lower the stress wch may have to be accepted in the interests of safety.
pressure vessels
- the pressure inside a spherical vessel is rp/2t where r= the radius of the vessel, p = pressure, and 2 = the shell wall thickness
- for a cylinder, the stress along the shell (i.e., longitudinally) is the same as that in a spherical vessel rp/2t
- teh circumferential stress in the shell of a cylinder is rp/t, meaning it is 2x the longitudinal stress, which explains why sausage skins split longitudinally when they are cooked because the skin can't handle the circumfrential stress
- this has effect in sailing, where chinese junk sails are rigged so that as wind pressure increasesthe radius of curvature diminishes and the tension force in the canvas remains roughly constant no matter how hard the winds may blow
- the only sort of elasticity which is stable under fluid pressures at high strains follow an exponential stress~strain curve (our veins and arteries operat under ~50% strain, and wouldn't work if they were under rubber-like straess-strain curves). This curve means you don't need much stress at first for any strain, but after a while the slope increases dramatically
- the heart works in that during the pumping (systolic) part of the cardiac cycle, much of the excess of high -pressure blood is accomodated by the elastic expansion of the aorta and of the larger arteries; this has the effect of smoothing the fluctuations of our blood pressure.
- the elasticity of the arteries therefore does the same job as the air-bottle affair which enegineers often attach to mechanical reciprocating pumps
- this is why, if artery walls stiff and harden with age, the blood-pressure is likely to rise
joints & fastenings
- a lapped joint creates stress concentrations at the two ends of the joint, which is why the strength of such joints depends mostly on their width and not the length of overlap between the two parts. This makes simple rivets very effective
- for rods screwed into an anchorage, nearly all of the laod is taken out by the first 2 or 3 threads near the surface, making any extra length of rod within the socket ineffective
- this is true when two components of the joint have simialr Young's moduli or when the rod/tension bar is less still than the material of its socket/anchorage. But if the rod or bar is substantially stiffer than the material into which one is trying to anchor it, the stress situation is often reversed and the concentration may exist mainly ata the bottom or inner end of the rod.
- riveted joints are heavier than welded joints, but they are also easier to inspect, and often act as crack-stoppers. Most importantly, riveted joints can slip a little and so redistribute the load
- rivet holes normally are punched then reamed. The reaming at the end makes the hole stronger and with fewer cracks that were made during the punch
- in theory a welded joint should be watertight, but seldom is. In practice, rivets are cheaply caulked, but that can't be donee with a welded joint, so instead a liquid sealing compound is injected under pressure into the weld.
surface tension
- tension in a liquid surface differs from Hookean tension in three aspects: 1. the tension force does not depend on the strain/extension but is constant however far the surface is stretched, 2. unlike a solid, the usrface of a liquid can be extended without breaking, 3. the tension force does not depend on the cross-sectional area but only upon the width of teh surface. The surface tension is just the same in a deep or "thick" liquid as it is in a shallow or "thin" one.
- so if two droplets join up to make one droplet of twice the volume, there is a net reduction in the surface area of the liquid and therefore the surface energy. So there is an energy incentive for drops in an emulsion to coalesce and for the system to segregate into to continuous liquids.
- if you want the droplets to remain separate and not coalesce, then you have to "stabilize the emulsion" so they repel each other. This can be done with electricity, which is why emulsions are affected by electrolytes like acids and alkalis
June 22, 2017
Overall, I liked but did not love this book.
The author's purpose is to introduce the basic principles of structural engineering in a way that leaves the reader with good intuitions about how structures work, an appreciation for how the field has evolved (and, in turn, how we've evolved with it), and optimism for what the future holds.
On the basis of fulfilling its purpose, the author does a great job. The author breaks down difficult concepts into understandable chunks. He uses math judiciously to make principles more relatable. By the end of the book, you can walk around a construction site and have a much better understanding of what's going on. More so, you're going to have a humility for all that you don't know.
One of my biggest takeaways, personally, was how little we understand of why structures work and how much of our recent experience with airplanes and bridges has been only after structures failed catastrophically.
I detested the author's tone. To the author's credit, he wrote in what certainly seemed to be a sincere tone, so I suppose that I may just detest him. He writes in the manner of a charming, elderly British professor.
What makes that more grating than charming to me are:
- His obfuscation at times by relying on obscure historic or British references
- His prejudices, including rhetorical asides that repeatedly suggest that little boys become engineers and little girls become frivolous targets for little boys to woo and that those who question whether British imperialism had downsides should be summarily dismissed
The author's purpose is to introduce the basic principles of structural engineering in a way that leaves the reader with good intuitions about how structures work, an appreciation for how the field has evolved (and, in turn, how we've evolved with it), and optimism for what the future holds.
On the basis of fulfilling its purpose, the author does a great job. The author breaks down difficult concepts into understandable chunks. He uses math judiciously to make principles more relatable. By the end of the book, you can walk around a construction site and have a much better understanding of what's going on. More so, you're going to have a humility for all that you don't know.
One of my biggest takeaways, personally, was how little we understand of why structures work and how much of our recent experience with airplanes and bridges has been only after structures failed catastrophically.
I detested the author's tone. To the author's credit, he wrote in what certainly seemed to be a sincere tone, so I suppose that I may just detest him. He writes in the manner of a charming, elderly British professor.
What makes that more grating than charming to me are:
- His obfuscation at times by relying on obscure historic or British references
- His prejudices, including rhetorical asides that repeatedly suggest that little boys become engineers and little girls become frivolous targets for little boys to woo and that those who question whether British imperialism had downsides should be summarily dismissed
March 26, 2017
With no real relevant educational or vocational background, I came to this book for the title and inspired chapter headings ("Strain energy and modern fracture mechanics--with a digression on bows, catapults, and kangaroos") and stayed for the captivating asides: "All over the world bridge-building used to be associated with children’s dances...and with human sacrifices which are not just legends. At least one child’s skeleton has been discovered immured in the foundations of a bridge."
Along the way, Gordon's casual and accessible manner of discussing how structures work--which happens to apply to pretty much everything, including the human body and its tiniest parts, e.g. blood vessels (an observation that, to me at least, wasn't already so obvious)--made for unexpectedly compelling and effective reading on a variety of topics that may sound somewhat specialized to those of us without engineering backgrounds. (I never thought I'd think so much about torsional stiffness, for example, or find my life marginally improved by knowing more about it.) But Gordon's prose has a way of making you step away from the book and into your environment with fresh eyes, newly aware that things may or may not fall down all because of a few fundamental facts about tension and compression, stress and strain. It's a preoccupying worldview; I can see why people end up structural engineers.
Recommended to anyone who is a structure or interacts with structures (one doesn't necessarily have to live a structured life), and is above say grade 6--there is some math here and there. Mileage may vary for those prone to anxiety; as it turns out, yes, your house *might* collapse without warning, but at least you'll know, should you be out when it happens, that it was almost certainly because the attic floor gave out and not that the roof caved in.
Along the way, Gordon's casual and accessible manner of discussing how structures work--which happens to apply to pretty much everything, including the human body and its tiniest parts, e.g. blood vessels (an observation that, to me at least, wasn't already so obvious)--made for unexpectedly compelling and effective reading on a variety of topics that may sound somewhat specialized to those of us without engineering backgrounds. (I never thought I'd think so much about torsional stiffness, for example, or find my life marginally improved by knowing more about it.) But Gordon's prose has a way of making you step away from the book and into your environment with fresh eyes, newly aware that things may or may not fall down all because of a few fundamental facts about tension and compression, stress and strain. It's a preoccupying worldview; I can see why people end up structural engineers.
Recommended to anyone who is a structure or interacts with structures (one doesn't necessarily have to live a structured life), and is above say grade 6--there is some math here and there. Mileage may vary for those prone to anxiety; as it turns out, yes, your house *might* collapse without warning, but at least you'll know, should you be out when it happens, that it was almost certainly because the attic floor gave out and not that the roof caved in.
March 10, 2019
!!! J.E. Gordon makes everything sooo interesting
May 12, 2011
Consistently illuminating - I read this book with the intention of seeing how learning about physical/engineering structures would translate/resonate for Organisational Development.
And it does. Gordon doesn't see a 'clear distinction between material and structure', for example - which I think is a really interesting insight.
It's fun, there's lots of interestingly powerful new words to learn, and, although it's very engineer-ish, I managed to grok most of it.
And it does. Gordon doesn't see a 'clear distinction between material and structure', for example - which I think is a really interesting insight.
It's fun, there's lots of interestingly powerful new words to learn, and, although it's very engineer-ish, I managed to grok most of it.
October 2, 2020
Хорошая разминка для мозгов. Инженерия это все-таки отчасти наука, отчасти искусство. Поэтому книга получилась с поэзией. Читал из списка Илона Маска, поэтому настроен был с большим интересом, чем если бы сам нашел. Это помогло дочитать книгу, хоть и после нескольких месяцев медленного прогресса. По результату - обещание книги выполняется, намного лучше понимаю как обеспечивается прочность конструкций. Здания, мосты, корабли, самолеты - нашлось место всему
March 3, 2017
Structures is, in terms of classes at the University of Florida, Mechanics of Materials and its lab, as well as Mechanical Design 1 and 2. Anything that is covered in these classes is covered here with a bit less math. Yet, while the textbooks for these classes may be dry and direct, Gordon is willing to make jokes, go on tangents, and explore his opinions. This makes an engineering book- beyond all expectations- a page turner.
More than one of my professors at UF used to be a consultant. When things blew up or went wrong, it was there job to go to court and point fingers after having studied the shit out of whatever blew up. And these stories were always the best stories. Tension? Compression? Fatigue failure? The best examples are non-examples. "Look on this wreckage, ye mighty, and despair-- please don't do this or our college gets a bad rap." Structures has tons of these examples, and as the book goes from the basic principles of factors of safety and critical crack lengths up to arches, we get more and more of them.
The last few chapters are calls to action: Failures in structures are almost always due to lazy designers or lazy manufacturing and these are critical moral failures of Biblical proportions. Parallel to this is failures in aesthetics: an engineer is mostly likely designing something that many people will use. Therefore, it is absolutely critical that what they're designing /is nice/. The Spartan ethic of functionalism is too narrow and close-minded.
Structures is a good book for the young engineer or the layman. It gives a -forgive me- structure to one's thoughts about structures. Because it deals with not just buildings, but vehicles, tools, and living things --like us-- it is important for the construction worker, the mechanic and the doctor.
More than one of my professors at UF used to be a consultant. When things blew up or went wrong, it was there job to go to court and point fingers after having studied the shit out of whatever blew up. And these stories were always the best stories. Tension? Compression? Fatigue failure? The best examples are non-examples. "Look on this wreckage, ye mighty, and despair-- please don't do this or our college gets a bad rap." Structures has tons of these examples, and as the book goes from the basic principles of factors of safety and critical crack lengths up to arches, we get more and more of them.
The last few chapters are calls to action: Failures in structures are almost always due to lazy designers or lazy manufacturing and these are critical moral failures of Biblical proportions. Parallel to this is failures in aesthetics: an engineer is mostly likely designing something that many people will use. Therefore, it is absolutely critical that what they're designing /is nice/. The Spartan ethic of functionalism is too narrow and close-minded.
Structures is a good book for the young engineer or the layman. It gives a -forgive me- structure to one's thoughts about structures. Because it deals with not just buildings, but vehicles, tools, and living things --like us-- it is important for the construction worker, the mechanic and the doctor.
April 21, 2024
You rarely see such a holistic cultural knowledge in a "STEM" professional. Quoting profusely from ancient Greek plays, historical industrial-age documents, etc. In general, this makes for a delightful read.
The actual engineering is explained very well, and often one feels a powerful sense of expansion in intuition, which is a feeling any good book explaining mechanics ought to do.
The last chapter on aesthetics is a surprising testament against functionalism, efficiency and other distinctly modern forms of hubris. He has no qualms in admitting that almost all modern constructed structures are ugly and demeaning to the spirit.
Since man can't help but to leave an imprint of himself in everything he does and creates, through the hideous architecture of today we see a mirror into the "mean little souls" of those who govern us. He decries the attempt to limit all design considerations to functional aspects:
"Too often nowadays our subjective judgement clashes with our scientific (or banausic) judgement. But we sweep the aesthetic judgement under the carpet at our peril".
He also defends formalism, the use of rules and structure in the creation of buildings, poetry, art, etc. By following a stylistic tradition, we have parameters on which to compare ourselves. The idea that by abandoning rules we liberate art is hubristic. He asks himself if Jane Austen would have been better if she "had felt free to make use of bad language and overt sex".
In closing, here's a last quote I found interesting:
"Modern art and architecture make a great parade about their freedom from traditional forms and conventions - which is possibly why they have achieved so little".
The actual engineering is explained very well, and often one feels a powerful sense of expansion in intuition, which is a feeling any good book explaining mechanics ought to do.
The last chapter on aesthetics is a surprising testament against functionalism, efficiency and other distinctly modern forms of hubris. He has no qualms in admitting that almost all modern constructed structures are ugly and demeaning to the spirit.
Since man can't help but to leave an imprint of himself in everything he does and creates, through the hideous architecture of today we see a mirror into the "mean little souls" of those who govern us. He decries the attempt to limit all design considerations to functional aspects:
"Too often nowadays our subjective judgement clashes with our scientific (or banausic) judgement. But we sweep the aesthetic judgement under the carpet at our peril".
He also defends formalism, the use of rules and structure in the creation of buildings, poetry, art, etc. By following a stylistic tradition, we have parameters on which to compare ourselves. The idea that by abandoning rules we liberate art is hubristic. He asks himself if Jane Austen would have been better if she "had felt free to make use of bad language and overt sex".
In closing, here's a last quote I found interesting:
"Modern art and architecture make a great parade about their freedom from traditional forms and conventions - which is possibly why they have achieved so little".
February 21, 2021
"It is energetically advantageous for a weight to fall to the ground, for strain energy to be released -and so on. Sooner or later the weight will fall to the ground and the strain energy will be released; but it is the business of a structure to delay such events for a season, for a lifetime or for thousands of years. All structures will be broken or destroyed in the end -just as all people will die in the end. It is the purpose of medicine and engineering to postpone these occurrences for a decent interval."
It's a nice read if you're interested in getting a basic grasp on mechanics. With a background in mechanical engineering, I did enjoy the historical anecdotes and the occasional practical note. However, the author spends so much time elaborating on basic concepts like tension, stress and strain that I'm not sure that I'd recommend it to anyone who has followed at least a basic course in mechanics. His switching between serious explanations and silly jokes doesn't feel well-balanced either - I, for one, am not interested in the Poisson's ratio of the author's tummy.
Moreover, for a book about structures, this book is structured very poorly. There's no conclusion and each section of every chapter is a completely different subject without clear coherence or story.
If you have zero prior knowledge of mechanics, his detailed explanations, mixed with humour and history, might be just the right accessible starting point. To anyone else, I would not recommend it.
It's a nice read if you're interested in getting a basic grasp on mechanics. With a background in mechanical engineering, I did enjoy the historical anecdotes and the occasional practical note. However, the author spends so much time elaborating on basic concepts like tension, stress and strain that I'm not sure that I'd recommend it to anyone who has followed at least a basic course in mechanics. His switching between serious explanations and silly jokes doesn't feel well-balanced either - I, for one, am not interested in the Poisson's ratio of the author's tummy.
Moreover, for a book about structures, this book is structured very poorly. There's no conclusion and each section of every chapter is a completely different subject without clear coherence or story.
If you have zero prior knowledge of mechanics, his detailed explanations, mixed with humour and history, might be just the right accessible starting point. To anyone else, I would not recommend it.
could-not-bear-to-finish
March 18, 2017This book was so interesting, really really interesting, but... always is a "but" in the unfinished books shelf isn't?, well the beginning was amazing and it maintained the pace -at least to 36% when i drop it- but the thing that bug me was the parallelism that the autor made of how the structures work with the human anatomy. I have instruction in basic mechanics -I am an engineer- and i love all that stuff of stress and strain in structures and objects, but when you start saying that a lot of strain on veins tissue can provoke an Aneurism... well, or excess of vibrations can provoke that your veins go zig zag on your body, and you say that tendons can be cut with a little knife but can sustain greats weight loads, all of this makes you start thinking about thinks that you should not think about. Of course all of this things are true, at least the behavior of this structures knowing their composition is predictable to some degree, the book is honest, but mixing what i know of engineering with tissues and the heart, and the tendons, and the arteries, well i don't want to lose my mind, no thank you.
October 7, 2020
Writing a book on engineering has two dangers. If one uses too much detail, formulas and numbers he will scare the reader with complexity and probably also bore him to death. If however the writer uses too little detail or does not venture into important technical concepts at all, it will appear as if he has no insight in the matters himself and tries to "wing it". Mr. Gordon manages to avoid both pitfalls and deliver an entertaining book full of examples of buildings, bridges, boats and aeroplanes and the structural concepts that underly them. It really does feel like I'm one step closer to becoming Elon Musk after reading this (even though it was written in the seventies!)
August 19, 2021
As a former structural engineer, it'd be nice to have known about books like this during university. Just for a different and less formal perspective.
August 13, 2022
This is Engineering 101. or a primer for it. It was written in as understandable a manner as possible for the subject matter, that is to say that while I may be an engineer I am not an engineer of this type so I had to take a step back think about what the author was saying...think about it some more and then go ahh or F' it, I dont really need to understand that to get the gist of this book. I did bits of both. This being said this was a very interesting book. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would and that is saying a lot about a book thats subject is basically math.
I read this because one of my children is studying to be a real deal engineer and I wanted to at least be able to understand some of the things they are excited about and this book accomplished that mission. Would I recommend it? Yeah probably for my geekier friends but not for for the artsy or history/literature inclined types. I will repeat you will learn the very basics of engineering in this book and if this appeals to you give it a go just go in knowing it is starting to show its age just a bit but the basics are still the same.
I read this because one of my children is studying to be a real deal engineer and I wanted to at least be able to understand some of the things they are excited about and this book accomplished that mission. Would I recommend it? Yeah probably for my geekier friends but not for for the artsy or history/literature inclined types. I will repeat you will learn the very basics of engineering in this book and if this appeals to you give it a go just go in knowing it is starting to show its age just a bit but the basics are still the same.
March 26, 2019
Very interesting book, I learned a lot. Gordon's prose is readable. He is also opinionated and throws in just the right number of anecdotes. I read this book while also watching the "Great Courses" class, "Understanding the World's Greatest Structures," by Stephen Ressler, and think those lectures covered a lot of the same material but with more compelling examples, buildings and bridges.
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February 9, 2024Tog bara nästan ett år å läsa den här boken
May 29, 2023
Full of practical information and fascinating insights. For instance, the human body has very little skeleton and a huge number of sinews. Compression structures never fail by compressive failure: they buckle or topple, and this is surprisingly expensive to avoid.
However, Gordon is rather too preachy about the ugliness of modern architecture, which is why I haven't given him five stars. Also, his previous book, "The New Science of Strong Materials" is better focused.
However, Gordon is rather too preachy about the ugliness of modern architecture, which is why I haven't given him five stars. Also, his previous book, "The New Science of Strong Materials" is better focused.
February 7, 2017
Read this on recommendation of Elon Musk
Circumferential stress is twice that of longitudinal stress so that's why the sausage bursts along the length of the sausage
it gets dry about 3/5 of the way through and then he starts telling stories. it's a casual textbook. learn a couple things. i wonder what will stick
Circumferential stress is twice that of longitudinal stress so that's why the sausage bursts along the length of the sausage
it gets dry about 3/5 of the way through and then he starts telling stories. it's a casual textbook. learn a couple things. i wonder what will stick
April 28, 2020
Even if the topic of the book is quite interesting, its contents are, ironically, poorly structured. It reads like the ramblings of a retired engineer listing things he recalls about his job, without following any particular order.
The writing is a bit confusing as well, but I guess that has more to do with the writting style of the 1970s.
The writing is a bit confusing as well, but I guess that has more to do with the writting style of the 1970s.
February 18, 2021
Nicely explained stress/strain/torsion relationships to strengths of materials for architectural needs... whether human infrastructure or biological systems. Irreverent and focused on accidents and what for most of human history has been pragmatic guesses and extrapolations rather than maths, I enjoyed it.
July 28, 2022
About as good a book on the subject as one could hope for - far more eloquent than engineering textbooks. Goes through the theories of stress, strain, fracture, and more steps in the process of structural engineering, in a way that’s relatively easy to follow.
November 26, 2020
The structures gets stretched at parts, but still a really good read if interested in strength of materials and stuff.
March 19, 2025
Most interesting version of a text book I’ve read. I chose this because it was supposed to be a structural engineering book for the layman explained without jargon. I wanted to leave the book with a structures 101 degree. I think I did?
The first half of this book is filled with explanations of what I am sure is very simple stuff that I had never formally been taught / learned. This was exactly what I was looking for.
The third quarter of this book got a bit confusing for me and he tackled subjects that I believe are just a bit less intuitive. I may have skipped a confusing section here and there.
The last quarter of the book the author turned into a philosopher about modern engineering and its relationship to the seemingly deteriorating beauty in the modern world. A welcome change of pace and an awesome way to end a great book.
4 stars only because I am not sharp enough to understand torsion. 🤷♂️
The first half of this book is filled with explanations of what I am sure is very simple stuff that I had never formally been taught / learned. This was exactly what I was looking for.
The third quarter of this book got a bit confusing for me and he tackled subjects that I believe are just a bit less intuitive. I may have skipped a confusing section here and there.
The last quarter of the book the author turned into a philosopher about modern engineering and its relationship to the seemingly deteriorating beauty in the modern world. A welcome change of pace and an awesome way to end a great book.
4 stars only because I am not sharp enough to understand torsion. 🤷♂️
October 24, 2025
It took me like a year to read this book since reading engineering stuff outside of working hours….is tough sometimes. Also the gender stuff in this book….rough.
The author does a good job of adding some humor and snark to an otherwise very dry topic, and I’ll admit I did chuckle to myself a few times. It also gave me a stronger appreciation for architecture/civil architecture type structures, and I liked the inclusion of photos/illustrations for various structural design concepts.
One of the lines that resonated the most toward the end of the book - “When you have got as far as a working drawing, if the structure you propose to have made is an important one, the next thing to do, and a very right and proper thing, is to worry about it like blazes.” A vibe honestly.
The author does a good job of adding some humor and snark to an otherwise very dry topic, and I’ll admit I did chuckle to myself a few times. It also gave me a stronger appreciation for architecture/civil architecture type structures, and I liked the inclusion of photos/illustrations for various structural design concepts.
One of the lines that resonated the most toward the end of the book - “When you have got as far as a working drawing, if the structure you propose to have made is an important one, the next thing to do, and a very right and proper thing, is to worry about it like blazes.” A vibe honestly.
October 7, 2024
Really interesting perspective on engineering in general, the philosophy of it and how engineered structures are analogous to biological ones. However, I found it difficult to follow the mathematical arguments at times and felt bullied by all those remarks on how "obvious" or "natural" some consequences were, lol. Sure, part of this was due to me not googling some terms, but he could've explained certain concepts at an even more fundamental level. Also some bad racist, classist and sexist moments which are to be expected from a man at the time, I guess.
January 27, 2026
Great book! Very informational from a foundational engineering perspective, and on top of that I really appreciated the sections about the lack of beauty in structures in the modern world and about how efficiency shouldn’t completely overshadow beauty either
March 3, 2021
Ребята, это просто эмейзинг
June 6, 2024
This should be a 2* but I hold special regard for patronizing old British crank professors who are perhaps a little in over their head
September 1, 2025
Well-written and well worth reading. I'm happy to have this on my shelf and will probably return to it again. The final three chapters kind of lost me.
January 3, 2026
I liked Gordon’s sense of humor, and some of his observations about the nature and behavior of structures are pure genius (I can quickly recall his explanations for the asymmetry of bird feathers, the increased criticality of torsion for monoplanes vs. biplanes, and why the lintels of Greek temples crack while a gorilla’s ribs don’t). But overall, he confused me as many times — or even more — than he provided insight. Parsing the formulas was a chore, despite my extensive background in mathematics. A worthy read, but quite unbalanced.
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