This is a great, deep article about the famous Tacoma Narrows bridge. It’s covers three distinct interesting topics: 1) the history of the construction and collapse of the bridge, 2) an explanation of the true cause of the collapse (flutter, not resonance) and 3) a discussion of the engineering hubris that makes failures like this possible as we forget the lessons learned of past generations.
Originally shared by Michael Cooke
Doesn’t resonate with me!
I’m sure for years many creative #physics teachers have included the 1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse in their coursework, citing it as a monster example of killer resonance. This long article with extensive video from Motherboard includes this most telling statement, albeit about the professional STEM community: namely that there is a particular tendency of ours, I think: to interpret what we see according to what we expect to see. This phenomenon, sometimes described as “the observer effect,” is so feared by scientists that various methods have been developed to prevent it. And yet it lingers, influencing experiments and everything else. Thanks to @pasternack
lovely
Too bad..