Wednesday, August 01, 2007

7 dead as Mississippi River bridge falls



I'm no engineer. But my money is on asymmetric load stressing due to all but one lane being closed for repairs combined with dynamic aeroelasticity flutter resulting in a destructive resonance which shook the bridge apart.

This sort of thing scares the shit out of me.

Bridges are designed by professional, college educated, civil engineers but maintained by those 5/1 city workers (1 guy working, 5 guys watching) union yokels with their propensity for using steel plates to mark their territory.

They don't know shit about harmonics, resonance, stress or balance.

I could be wrong.

I probably am. I'm seldom as smart as I think I am.

At least that's what all of my wives told me. Over, and over, and over again. Then once more just for "emphasis".

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Those union blue collar yokels are doing what those college educated white tie engineers tell them to do.

I'm sure there'll be plenty of blame to go around on this tragedy, but according to a news report I saw, there was a report of stress fractures a few years ago and then after that, all of the inspections showed no problem.

Anonymous said...

correction, meant to say "white shirt and tie engineers"

FletcherDodge said...

I think the entire blame for this tragedy can be put on the Bush administration for not releasing national guard troops to fix the bridge in the first place.

Faith said...

emaw cracks me up!

I think you and my fiance need to have a heart to heart, XO. He needs to know he's not alone. (Oh, and please tell him not to leave me when I'm being a pain in the ass! I feel bad about it...but it just *happens*.)

You should see some of the overpasses they have in LA. Maybe you HAVE seen some of the overpasses they have in LA. The Twin's oldest didn't like those overpasses before this random thing happened. Good luck to her in driving over them with her in the car now!

Spyder said...

I'm more worried about driving under the bridges.

Jay said...

Just the other day I said to a friend, "Ah look, our tax dollars at work you see, on guy does all the work while the others just stand their and watch!" "I want to be the dude that gets to watch!"
---------------------Jay Bird's KC

Nightmare said...

C'mon X do you really think that and Engineer is smarter then the guy who does all the heavy lifting?

Strong like Ox, Smart like Tractor.