tallbridgeguy

The Sunshine bridge disaster happened on May 9th, 1980. The attached video contains some of the original audio from the Coast Guard receiving a call from the damaged ship.

From wikipedia,

The southbound span of the original bridge (built in 1969) was destroyed at 7:33 a.m. on May 9, 1980, when the freighter MV Summit Venture collided with a pier (support column) during a storm, sending over 1200 feet (366m) of the bridge plummeting into Tampa Bay. The collision caused six automobiles and a Greyhound bus to fall 150 feet (46 m), killing 35 people.

One man, Wesley MacIntire, survived the fall when his Ford pickup truck landed on the deck of the Summit Venture before falling into the bay. He sued the company that owned the ship, and settled for $175,000 in 1984. For the remaining nine years of his life until he died in 1989, MacIntire was haunted by the fact that he was the only one to survive the fall from the collapsing bridge.

The pilot of the ship, John Lerro, was cleared of wrongdoing by both a state grand jury and a Coast Guard investigation.

Just playing around on break…

An article on the Princeton University website, “Connecting art and engineering in Streicker Bridge critique“, by Chris Emery, about the new campus bridge.

I know nothing about this bridge but the article says it was developed by Christian Menn….

Courtesy of Princeton University

If you have a class of 60 students in a 3rd year structural analysis course, how many would you expect to pass? (I seem to have a minority opinion.) I have been looking around the internet for information on grade distributions.

What I mean by that, is a description of a reasonable distribution of grades for a typical engineering class. One of the problems I find in teaching is determining final grades.

I try to be as fair as possible in assigning grades. I build distributions, look at the students tests for trends and try to find information about how grades compare to other sections. Grading tests can be difficult if partial credit is given.

For example, what happens when a student makes a small error in the first step of a moment distribution problem, say a wrong FEM, that causes the shear and moment diagrams to be wrong? The student knew how to make the diagrams and they have the right shape but the numbers are off…..how much credit should they get?

Should a third year class have an average of B, C, or D? I have a hard time finding help on these questions because Universities seem loathe to give guidance on these issues for instructors.

I did find the chart below on a University website and it seems reasonable to me. Do you think the distribution looks fair for engineers?

With all the new tube bridges floating around I wondered who was first? Who came up with the idea and who built the first one? (Then…why is the shape important after the first one?)

Here is one I found from 2007.

After some feedback, maybe I should have called the earlier post “Do U.S. engineers care about the environment?”

Let us start with the essay posted on the Texas A&M University, ethics in engineering website, entitled “Engineers and the Environment.”

According to this essay engineers may actually be precluded from caring about the environment. (See National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) Code of Ethics)

Quote:

The NSPE code contains the following statement:

Engineers may express publicly a professional opinion on technical subjects only when that opinion is founded upon adequate knowledge of the facts and competence in the subject matter.

An engineer may object to a dam that will destroy a wild river or flood hundreds of acres of farmland. Or he may object to designing a sawmill that is to be built in the midst of an ancient forest. In all of these cases the judgments involve considerations outside the engineer’s professional expertise. An engineer may well object to these projects, but he or she should not object as an engineer.

To do so is to invite public disrespect for the engineering profession.

It seems engineers can only care about the environment if that “caring” happens to coincide with the wishes of the client and falls within the expertise of the designing engineer. Engineers can of course turn down jobs if the project offends their internal sensitivities. The NSPE has some professional obligations that state “Engineers are encouraged to adhere to the principles of sustainable development in order to protect the environment for future generations.”
HP was a little more straightforward and made a comment I completely agree with,

I think the idea in your update, that engineers should be tightly bound within their discipline, is appalling. Ecologists and other specialists are there to support engineers in making decisions that are in their client’s and the wider community’s best interests. Engineers should be challenging this kind of pigeonholing, and that means educating themselves about the wider issues relevant to their work, be they ecological, social, cultural or political.

In another comment, I was asked about the “LEED – Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design” organization. I believe LEED is primarily for the promotion of environmentally responsible buildings and although it has started filtering into the bridge industry is not here yet. (I have started to see construction companies / products advertise themselves as LEED complaint.)

It should be noted the LEED is not a government organization. From the all knowing wiki,

Because of its name, USGBC is sometimes confused for a government agency or entity, but it is not; it is a private 501(c)(3), membership based non-profit organization. At the end of February 2010, USGBC had more than 18,500 member organizations from every sector of the building industry. USGBC works to promote buildings that are environmentally responsible, profitable and healthy places to live and work. To achieve this it has developed a variety of programs and services, and works closely with key industry and research organizations and federal, state and local government agencies.

I could start a bridge LEED or BLEED, and ask agencies who give out projects to only allow BLEED compliant companies to bid on their contracts. I would of course charge a small fee to provide the training and certification….

I have to get back to work, so my question still remains but maybe with a slight modification.

Can an engineer care about the environment without the client’s approval? Or is this a recipe for a lot of out of work engineers…

I am off topic again, whatever you think about the oil spill, we should still remember those who died in the initial explosion.

Blair Manuel was a 56-year-old engineer from Gonzalez with three daughters. He had season tickets to Louisiana State University baseball and football games, said his mother, Geneva Manuel.

Gordon Jones of Baton Rouge was also an engineer. He was 29, and had gotten off the phone with his wife Michelle just 10 minutes before the explosion.

Update:

Sorry this is not on the same scale as above but as someone who has seven animals living in the same house, the spill is devastating the local animal population. Click on the image for the story.

Going off topic for a minute, I have always wondered if engineers cared about the environment. My father, an engineer, believes all the natural resources are there to be used and treehuggers are too concerned with small fuzzy animals. A colleague at work believes that global warming is a hoax and a tool of the great left wing conspiracy.

I don’t see or hear engineers speaking up about saving this or that, or worrying about using greener materials in their work. The recent oil spill is a manifestation of an engineer’s belief that they can manage any risk and design for any situation. Add in politicians who say things like,

Taylor told a group of reporters waiting at Atlantic Aviation he was less concerned about the spill after witnessing its movement firsthand.

“This isn’t Katrina. It’s not Armageddon,” Taylor said. “A lot of people are scared and I don’t think they should be.”

He described the spill as a light, rainbow sheen with patches that look like chocolate milk.

and you have a recipe for trouble.

I’m not going to argue that global warming is real or not but I will argue that environmental conditions are getting worse. (For example, I would never dream of swimming in any of the lakes in our state….)

So what should engineers do?

Updated: Here is a good essay on the subject.

Money Quote and a sad thing for engineers:

Those who believe that professional engineering obligations to the environment should not be extended beyond a concern for factors that endanger human health could make the following arguments.

First, the judgments that would have to be made in this area fall outside the area of professional engineering expertise and as such might be considered a violation of professional responsibility. Suppose an engineer is asked to participate in the design of a condominium which will be built on a wetland area. The engineer objects because she believes that the wetland area is especially important for the ecology of the area. This judgment is not a professional engineering judgment, but rather one more appropriately made by a biologist.

• A bridge is not built in Australia
• TY Lin wins an award
• Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission – I-95/Scudder Falls bridge going ahead
• A massive crane lifted the new R. Kelly Bryant Pedestrian Bridge over N.C. Highway 147
• Toronto pedestrian bridge – did it get approved?