While the public may confuse science and engineering to some extent, anyone who has spent much time in an academic department in either field knows how sharp a distinction can be drawn between the two. bill hammackThe professor of engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who has been with the university since he was a master’s student in 1986, certainly has his own ideas on the subject. video above From his popular YouTube channel engineer guy Use the example to explain how cathedrals were designed in the Middle Ages. Sainte Chapelle In Paris. Specifically, we explore how the arches and supporting walls of such buildings were designed without any help from science or even mathematics.
Compared to today, the scope of knowledge commanded to humanity in the Middle Ages may have been incredibly narrow, not to mention the knowledge possessed by certain humans outside of the literate elite. However, what was known at the time has proven to be more than enough to build structures that still exist and really leave an impression centuries later (in some cases over 1000 years).
Hammack explains that instead of making calculations, builders take actions. For example, a medieval stonemason would have drawn a life-sized chalk picture of an arch, placed a rope along the shape, and cut the rope to match the length of the arch. He was then able to use a rope to determine, without using numbers, how thick the walls needed to be between a quarter and a fifth of the span of the arch.
Hammack points out that the Romans also understood this necessary proportion in arch construction. “The law of proportions was not derived from scientific analysis of stones and their properties,” he says. “It is born from centuries of experience and trial and error.” Such heuristics, or rules of thumb, constitute “imprecise methods used as shortcuts to finding solutions to problems by narrowing the range of possible solutions.” They are also employed in engineering methods to “use available resources to bring about the best possible change in poorly understood situations.” Its thoroughgoing practicality seems to have little to do with the various kinds of rigor applied to science, where establishing truth, or at least the absence of falsehood, is everything. You don’t need faith in the religious sense to believe in engineering approaches to such problems, but if you are so inclined, you can find evidence of their effectiveness in chapels, or at least arches, from the Sainte-Chapelle to the Panthéon to the Hagia Sophia.
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Based in Seoul, Colin Mbemust write and broadcastIt’s about cities, languages ​​and cultures. he is the author of the newsletter books about cities books as well Home page (I won’t summarize Korea) and korean newtro. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter. @Colinbemust.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
