Stupid Engineering Mistakes

lee1 writes "Wired has bestowed on us a list of the ten worst engineering mistakes of all time. We have the St. Francis Dam designed by 'self-taught' engineer William Mulholland, which burst and wiped out several towns near LA; the Kansas City Hyatt walkway collapse; the DC-10, and more, but my favorite is the one I'd never heard of: a giant tank of molasses that ruptured in 1919 and sent 'waves of molasses up to 15 feet high' through Boston, killing 21."

Comments

This is filed under "humor?"

[setirw]

I don't consider disasters as consequences of poor engineering to be especially funny.

Re:Digg Dupe

[linvir]

I used to complain about this too. Then I remembered that Digg and Slashdot exist in the same reality, so there's likely to be some convergence in the content.

Ten Worst of ALL TIME???

[Em Adespoton]

From the way things play out, I presume it really means the ten worst reported in the US in the last two centuries. It doesn't even mention the disaster in Japan a few years ago where an entire mega-mall collapsed because they forgot to increase the gague of the beams for the parking level after tweaking the design for the upper levels. I'm pretty sure there were probably some major engineering disasters in building early pyramids and ziggarauts too, not to mention the Roman buildings that didn't survive through the ages.

Feats of the past

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>astounding feats of engineering accomplished before computers came along. Now errors seem rampant

Errors were always rampant. Railway bridges used to collapse routinely. Frank Lloyd Wright built buildings that couldn't even keep the rain off, a feat pre-industrial peasants had been managing for thousands of years.

Only the best work has survived until now.

Re:one comment, one addition

[thc69]

False. In engineering there is no difference between the plans and the changes: they are both the plan. There are very well defined processes called "Engineering Changes" that must be adhered to, which include reviews of calculations...blah blah blah yakkety schmakkety

False. In large-project construction reality, there is too much bullshit involved in going through the proper channels for seemingly minor changes. Making matters worse, architects and engineers often have an attitude or respect problem when working with contractors, causing apathy in contractors and workers. The result: Architects/engineers make even more unreasonable specifications in an attempt to tighten control, and contractors say "Fuck it" more and more often to bigger and bigger things.

Re:DC-10 Worst Engineering Disaster hardly...

[darkmeridian]

"The engineer that designed it probably reasoned, that any failure that would result in all three being severed would be large enough that the aircraft would be lost."

I guess that was a self-fulfilling prophesy, huh?

Re:one comment, one addition

[ScrewMaster]

As I recall a junior engineer approved the change without consulting with more experienced engineers.

How'd you like to be that guy.

Re:Correct...

[geobeck]

...in this case, it's like they tied the bottom rope to the middle guy's ankle...

We need to mod this up to a 6. I also studied this disaster in school, but this simple paragraph does a much better, simpler job of explaining the cause than any other I've heard.

Shining example of humanity in al lthe fuckups

[Unknown Poltroon]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup_Center

The citgroup building in manhattan. It was well desigend to the standard enginnering principles by its architecht/engineer William LeMessurier. Shortly after its construction, he got a call from a student who asked him about a different type of wind shear, and he assured the student the building was bult to withstand all winds up to like 130mph. After a little thought, he ran the numbers again as the student brought up, and realized that a hurricane might take out the building, and cause a domino effect that would take out most of manhatten. This man actually stepped up and told the buildings owners about the problem, and came up with a plan to fix it. This story seriously restored my faith in humanity, and he is one of the great unknown heroes of our age. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut, and no one could have faulted him, he did everything right. But he still stepped up and said "theres a problem with what i did...."
This is one of the best examples of ethics i have ever seen.