Stupid Engineering Mistakes 592
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."
This is filed under "humor?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Forgot the biggest one (Score:2, Insightful)
Windows
Re:Digg Dupe (Score:4, Insightful)
Ten Worst of ALL TIME??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Feats of the past (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I have a few... (Score:3, Insightful)
Pontiac Grand AM 1997-2006 - I want to personally kill the engineer that designed that engine cooling system.
All Delco car radio products 1990-2006 - Those engineers need to be beaten hard with the product they made. Any car that can lose functionality or even not run when you remove the factory radio was designed by a retarted engineer.
I can go on for days just on recent automotive designs and building techniques. Automotive engineers are the most hated on the planet lately because of the incredibly stupid designs they continue to come up with.
And they have done it for decades, Oldmosbile Quad 4 engine, instead of making the engine balanced we put in a harmonic balancer that runs at 4X the engine RPM's.. but not use a system that can handle the incredible RPM's or make sure it stays oiled.
Re:What was the basis for judgement on those?? (Score:2, Insightful)
not an engineering mistake. The plitical issues surrinding the levees manifiested themselves as an enginer mistake.
Re:one comment, one addition (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DC-10 Worst Engineering Disaster hardly... (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess that was a self-fulfilling prophesy, huh?
Re:one comment, one addition (Score:4, Insightful)
How'd you like to be that guy.
Re:one comment, one addition (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll also add that most construction workers and contractors are more "street-wise", savvy people, and are more tuned into their perception of non-verbal communications. Frequently we engineers get them annoyed because we're simply completely absorbed in something and they (the contractors) think we're snobs, have bad attitudes, etc. (I get to observe it from both sides!)
Also, people seem to HATE delays, regardless of the risk. Did we forget to mention the launch of the ill-fated Challenger, despite the launch-delay pleas of the engineers?
Re:Correct... (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Shining example of humanity in al lthe fuckups (Score:2, Insightful)
From the Wiki:
While LeMessurier's original design and load calculations for the special, uniquely-designed 'chevron' load braces used to support the building were based on welded joints, a labor and cost-saving change altered the joints to bolted construction after the building's plans were approved. The engineers did not recalculate what the construction change
Again, it comes back to changes being made after designs are finished. It seems to go hand-in-hand with many of other disasters mentioned here.
Re:one comment, one addition (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're going to design something that's hard to make -- and thus tempt the builders to take shortcuts -- you'd better darn well spell out in detail exactly the steps to take to fabricate it.
Re:DC-10 Worst Engineering Disaster hardly... (Score:3, Insightful)
During WW-II, when Boeing was building bombers, they did a thorough analysis of where the flak damage was on the bombers that made it back after a mission. Then they redesigned or beefed up the parts where there was no damage -- on the principle that aircraft that had taken flak in those places didn't make it back.
They also did things like use four hydraulic lines (routed separately) where the DC-10 used three.