Structures Quotes

“The science of elasticity is about the interactions between forces and deflections in materials and structures.”
― J.E. Gordon, Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down

“Probably the most important development in materials during the last few years has been that made by the plant geneticists who have been breeding fast-growing varieties of commercial timbers. Thus varieties of Pinus radiata (Weymouth pine) are now being planted which, in favourable conditions, will increase in diameter by up to 12 centimetres per year and may be fit for felling, as mature timber, in six years. So there is a good prospect of timber becoming a crop which can be grown on a short time-cycle. Nearly all the energy which is needed to make it grow is provided, free, by the sun. Presumably, when one has finished with a timber structure, it could be burnt to yield up most of the energy which it has collected while it was growing. This is, of course, in no way true of steel or concrete. Again, timber used to need lengthy and expensive seasoning in heated kilns, which used up a good deal of energy. As a result of recent research it is now possible to season sizeable soft-wood scantlings in twenty-four hours, at a very low cost. These are very important developments in relation to structures and to the world energy situation,”
― J.E. Gordon, Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down

“structure has been defined as ‘any assemblage of materials which is intended to sustain loads’, and the study of structures is one of the traditional branches of science. If an engineering structure breaks, people are likely to get killed, and so engineers do well to investigate the behaviour of structures with circumspection. But, unfortunately, when they come to tell other people about their subject, something goes badly wrong, for they talk in a strange language, and some of us are left with the conviction that the study of structures and the way in which they carry loads is incomprehensible, irrelevant and very boring indeed. Yet structures are involved in our lives in so many ways that we cannot really afford to ignore them: after all, every plant and animal and nearly all of the works of man have to sustain greater or less mechanical forces without breaking, and so practically everything is a structure of one kind or another. When we talk about structures we shall have to ask, not only why buildings and bridges fall down and why machinery and aeroplanes sometimes break, but also how worms came to be the shape they are and why a bat can fly into a rose-bush without tearing its wings. How do our tendons work? Why do we get ‘lumbago’? How were pterodactyls able to weigh so little? Why do birds have feathers? How do our arteries work? What can we do for crippled children? Why are sailing ships rigged in the way they are? Why did the bow of Odysseus have to be so hard to string? Why did the ancients take the wheels off their chariots at night? How did a Greek catapult work? Why is a reed shaken by the wind and why is the Parthenon so beautiful? Can engineers learn from natural structures? What can doctors and biologists and artists and archaeologists learn from engineers? As it has turned out, the struggle”
― J.E. Gordon, Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down