“That’s a great tower you’ve built! Just the right height, pretty arches, and that white marble really shows it off. Just one itty-bitty thing—that lean. It really does tilt, and people are even beginning to call it the Leaning Tower of Pisa.”
“Oh, that? Don’t worry! It’s just settling in. Give it a year or two and it will straighten out.”
You can imagine this conversation taking place back in the Middle Ages, when work was finally finished on the bell tower of Pisa Cathedral. Centuries have passed, and the tower still leans worryingly. But with better planning, mainly in the engineering department, the famous tower would never have tilted in the first place.
How Bad Is Bad?
Could you really call the Leaning Tower an engineering disaster? You could even argue the opposite—that it put Pisa on the international tourist map. After all, who goes out of their way to see the Upright Tower of Bologna or the Perpendicular Column of Naples? But in the end, there’s something a bit . . . embarrassing . . . about that tower in Pisa.
It’s not the only “whoops” example that you’ll get a chance to examine in The Book of Massively Epic Engineering Disasters. How about that open-top electric vehicle, the Sinclair C5, that was launched in the rain on a winter afternoon? Or the “Spruce Goose,” one of the largest and most expensive planes ever built, which had just one flight and reached an altitude of—wait for it—70 feet? Or maybe the Louisiana lake that just drained away like an emptying bathtub because oil engineers drilled through the wrong bit of lake bed?
All of those seem almost comical and harmless, but engineering mistakes can also lead to deadly consequences. Thousands died when a hastily constructed wooden coliseum collapsed nearly 2,000 years ago in Italy. The catastrophic loss of the Titanic in 1912 can be traced to poor engineering as well. Even Boston’s deadly Molasses (yes, molasses) Flood of 1919 could have been prevented if engineers had paid more attention to the way liquids behave under enormous pressure.
Asking the Right Questions
In the following pages, you’ll be able to examine 20 engineering disasters from ancient times right up to the 21st century. Pay attention, because you’ve been called in to make sure these mistakes don’t happen again!
A brief introduction to each episode sets the stage, locking it into a time and place so you can get a feel for what happened when disaster struck. Then you have a chance to look more closely in the section called “What Went Wrong?” That’s where you get the full story, including the consequences—and cost—of each engineering mishap.
Armed with that information, you can try to “Turn Back the Clock.” And that’s where the fun really begins. Here’s where you go behind the scenes to find out not just what happened in each case, but why it happened. And that “why,” more often than not, is down to engineering. You’ll see how things could have been changed or considered differently at every stage of development. These are the sort of concerns that engineers deal with every day.
Engineering, of course, is all about getting things made and operating well. But it’s also about using your curiosity along the way and asking questions. A successful project has a lot of “what ifs,” “how abouts,” and “why nots” built into it. This section of the book is your chance to examine some of these questions . . . because you’ll be asking more of your own in the final section of each chapter. And you might be surprised by some of the answers.
Over to You
Each chapter has one or two experiments to help drive home the scientific principle that had a starring role in the disaster. You could find yourself experimenting with air pressure, thermal stress, the center of mass, or seismic waves. There’s even a great experiment to demonstrate non-Newtonian liquids, but fair warning: You might wind up with toothpaste on the ceiling!
YOU WILL NEED
All the stuff you need to perform the experiment is listed in this section. You’ll find nearly everything around your house, in the garage, or in a shed.
METHOD
The instructions on how to conduct the experiment are numbered clearly and as easy to follow as a cooking recipe or instructions for building a model.
WHAT’S UP?
Here’s your chance to make the connection between the experiment you’ve just conducted and the main scientific principles at work.
TAKE CARE!
Every now and then an experiment will have a warning to make sure that you’re careful about flames, sharp objects, or other potential risks.
Back to the Drawing Board?
Remember that The Book of Massively Epic Engineering Disasters is all about getting to the root of what went wrong and how things could have been engineered differently to avoid disaster. With your own smarts, new scientific knowledge, and firsthand experience, you’ll be in a lucky position.
Now, there’s something you can build on!
