A big thank you to the lovely audience at Cafe Scientifique Brighton who welcomed me this evening for my talk, A World Tour of Structural Form. I felt very welcome indeed.
The aim of the talk was to share a number of basic structural engineering principles and to demonstrate how these can be used to explain how buildings stand up. The talk was illustrated with structures from around the world. I promised no maths and no equations. I stuck to my promise, and judging from the audience responses to my questions, I think this method worked!
As I said on stage the talk was based on a workshop we developed at Think Up for the Expedition Workshed website. If anyone is interested in downloading the slides or using the workshop then go to www.expeditionworkshed.org and click on Staffroom/Undergraduate and you will see the World Tour there. (This link will take you straight to the right page)
I was asked a question about onion-shaped domes: are they self restraining? To which I didn’t know the answer and promised I would find out more. When I do I’ll post the answer here.
More about the World Tour of Structural Form Workshop
The idea behind the world tour workshop is to encourage students to use an understanding of the real world to help them learn how to design. The workshop asks students to study a number of famous structures and to ask how they stand up. By the end of the exercise participants can deduce that structures (both at a global at an elemental scale) can be loosely categorised into compression struts, beams, arches and tensile elements. The intention is that having this basic understanding can help students analyse and better interpret what they see around them.
Simon
Bonjour!
Thanks so much for your talk last night. It was so interesting, and I totally support your paradigm for educating people about engineering. Maybe if my BEng had been taught in this, practical way I may have a) found it more interesting, and b) worked in engineering ever, instead of which I work in film production and wine-making 😀
Salut!
Simon (in English: Simon [god I’m hilarious])
Oliver Broadbent
Hi Simon,
Really great to hear that you enjoyed the talk and liked the approach, which, as you say, I hope would bring more people into engineering in the first place, and then encourage them to stay there. Mind you, I am almost equally enthusiastic about film making and wine making…the world needs that too!
Oliver