Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down by J. E. Gordon (PDF)

Description

In a book that Business Insider noted as one of the “14 Books that inspired Elon Musk,” J.E. Gordon strips engineering of its confusing technical terms, communicating its founding principles in accessible, witty prose.For anyone who has ever wondered why suspension bridges don’t collapse under eight lanes of traffic, how dams hold back-or give way under-thousands of gallons of water, or what principles guide the design of a skyscraper or a kangaroo, this book will ease your anxiety and answer your questions. J. E. Gordon strips engineering of its confusing technical terms, communicating its founding principles in accessible, witty prose.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐If you are curious about things around you this book is for you. It’s a classic from a highly respected author in the engineering field. However, the beauty of Gordon’s presentation of the mechanics behind structures is that the book draws on examples in biology (bones, muscles, and plants), airframes, and sailing vessels as well as buildings and other physical infrastructure. Despite being a naturally curious individual, there were a lot of “Ohhhhhhh….” moments for me. For example, linking the cut of women’s dresses with sails. How trees grow in such a way as to put their trunks under compression and tension at the same time. And why the steel skeletons of skyscapers use “H” shaped beams. At the same time, math is kept to a minimum. Made me want to change my career toward engineering!

⭐It’s not what I was expecting but the engineer in me loved it. If you ever wonder how things work or if you need to get a gift for an engineer I would recommend this book

⭐Structures: Or why things don’t fall down A very interesting book, covering a wide field of topics, from the ground up you might say.Basic concepts of forces are addressed. Compression, tension, shear and torsion forces, and their occurrence in everything from bridges, ancient coliseums, trees, boats and human biology. This, the author does very well; constantly interweaving the effects of various types of strains and stresses and fractures as they occur in wood construction and metal beams, as well as human skeletons and arteries.Reasons for, and types of failure are described for wood, concrete, boat sails, steel, femurs and aortas. Advantageous shapes of design for handling wind and accepting impacts are given, and reasons for spoke wheels. Critical and safe limits of fatigue and fracture are described…historical cases are offered, describing why early aero planes crashed and bridges fell down, and why boats capsize.Cautions are pointed out. Over design of repair: The repair must work in harmony with the repaired material, and not be so unyielding that it works against it. So many invisible forces of tension and compression are at play, and violation of acceptable limits must be watched for when they manifest in fractures.Different approaches to bridge trusses are explained, not so much mathematically, but in concepts of load bearing and the transference of force throughout the truss. By way of example, Bowstring bridges seem quite clever in design, where the internal force of the arch pulls the roadway below it taught so that the whole thing is held in equilibrium like a bow and arrow on a giant scale.The all important “thrust line” is a constant theme from chapter to chapter. Now I know why those old cathedrals have so many spires and spooky statues way up there, and it’s not for warding off evil spirits, it’s because they’re heavy.There are photographs, all clumped together in the middle of the book. Black and white, kind of blurry, but still a helpful aid. Very nice drawings, not blurry, and graphs are abundant in all chapters to help visualize the topics being discussed.These and many more topics and application fill this book, none of it came across as boring or dry.Beyond the final chapter, a few concepts are given a light mathematical treatment. Moments in I-beams, deflections in cantilevers and so forth.The pages are made of sturdy heavy paper, the printing is nice size and clear for those who require reading glasses, with ample space around the print for making marginal notes.

⭐This text was clearly generated using OCR from an older book.The italicized test at the start of each chapter is oddly formatted and some OCR errors crept in.For example in the “spherical pressure vessels” section at loc 1664 it says that the “thickness of the wall or shell is l [ell]” but the formula used is “s = rp / 2t” and there is no l in that formula. The l [ell] should clearly be a t [tee].Less important but more maddening is at location 1810 where when speaking of hawks, we find that “[these] exacting and maddening birds lpse condition very easily.” A simply OCR substitution of p for o like this would have been caught by a simply spell check.This book should have been proofread after scanning and before typesetting.As to the content of the book it does a good job of covering the behavior of real-world things you may be familiar with. But while sometimes it does a great job of explaining what is happening it doesn’t do as good a job explaining why at times. The formulas for some forces as just thrown out as obvious, and indeed they would be derivable easily if you have the right background. But they deserve two more sentences of explanation in many cases.And some things are simply hand waived at and ignored. For example when discussing the billowing of bat wings we are told “It is clear there can be in practice be little or no aerodynamic loss as a consequence of this change of shape”. Well, I don’t know why that is so clear and I won’t know by reading this book.I enjoyed it, it’s an amusing book to help those who say “I don’t need math in the real world” see how much math actually helps you in the real world. But in many cases it isn’t going to do more than whet your appetite for explanations of why.

⭐h of materials course at Stanford School of Aeronautical Engineering in 1970. I would have appreciated the history and values of the field of Engineering.

⭐This book is readable.I wanted to learn about materials stress, faults and fractures.The entire book is a joy to read – I can’t believe it sat in my book-jenga pile for months, waiting so patiently. If I had known how good it was going to be…I could have read this book in the place of five others and enjoyed reading it five times over.Starting it over again tomorrow. This is my top book of April 2020.

⭐This was an excellent brief overview of stress, strain, and other general structural analyses. There are spots where the reader can tell that the book is dated, specifically where the author writes about composite materials like carbon fiber. However, the subject matter has not changed much since the date of writing as the laws of physics tend not to change. I read this book as a refresher from my stengths and statics class years ago and to learn some histories of structure design.

⭐Very insightful book, the principles behind structural engineering has been captured well, going through the mathmatic fundamentals and how equations that we use today were derived and how they are critical to the very fabric of life as everything that exist has some form of structure towards it. This is the road in which I was hoping the book would go towards, explaining how engineers take inspiration off nature, which it has touched upon, but the for the most parts it was just felt like reading an engineering book that you would need for your univeristy lectures. wished it dived a bit more into the story and real life example areas, as the very technical side of the book whilst interesting tends to drag and get a bit boring….

⭐Decided to buy this book as I am a construction management student currently in my third year. I was surprised by the amount of equations and mathematics within this book, was hoping to have more examples related to actual structures and not some materials. Better suited to an engineer (no surprise there) the book just wasn’t for me.

⭐One of the most clearly written books to explain structures to anyone. There is actually masses of technical detail in this book, but it is presented in a really easy way to understand. Recommended to anyone studying structures who doesn’t want a bland text book.

⭐Very readable almost all the way throughout, although less so towards the end, where it gets philosophical rather than practical. Particularly intriguing are the Biblical references, which could so easily be lost by those unfamiliar with Scripture.Sadly, in the Kindle edition, the various formulae are so tiny as to be unreadable. There are also several misspellings of names (e.g. Brunei) perhaps as a result of scanning text rather than relying it.

⭐Recommended by one of the greatest problem solvers around Elon Musk, so you all should read it too. Then buy a Tesla

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