Catastrophe!: Great Engineering Failure-And Success (Scientific American Mysteries of Science) - Softcover

Bortz, Fred

Softcover

ISBN 10: 071676539X ISBN 13: 9780716765394

Publisher: W H Freeman & Co, 1995

Synopsis

Describes engineering disasters, such as the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the space shuttle Challenger, and Three Mile Island, and explains what was learned from each incident

About this title

From the Author

For a long time, my colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University had been asking me to write a book on engineering for young readers, but I never knew where to start. That changed when I was fortunate to attend a presentation by Prof. Henry Petroski of Duke University, who has written for adults on the role of failure in successful engineering design. Catastrophe! is the result.

From the Inside Flap

Have you ever built a house of cards, only to watch it fall as you add one card too many? Imagine how an engineer feels when his or her "house of cards" is a bridge or a spacecraft!

Engineers are responsible for creating some of the most spectacular structures of modern times. But engineers are human, so sometimes they make mistakes. If they are good engineers, they learn from the things that go wrong, whether big or small.

In Catastrophe! you will read about spectacular engineering failures, some of which were tragic: the collapse of a walkway suspended several stories above a hotel lobby, an airplane that crashed into the side of a mountain, the Challenger disaster, and a nuclear power plant accident with a far-reaching aftermath.

What can engineers understand from these events to prevent them from happening again.

Edition details

• Publisher: W H Freeman & Co
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 071676539X
• ISBN 13: 9780716765394
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 80
• Illustrator: Tong Gary