Remember when you had to build a bridge out of popsicle sticks in high school science class? The goal was to construct the miniature bridge that could withstand the most physical stress. Your materials were just sticks and glue. So the real challenge was to find strong shapes.
On the day of testing, we all learned very quickly what those shapes were. Bridges built out of lots of squares collapsed almost instantly. Bridges built out of triangles made the finals.
This is a pretty basic lesson, but it’s not one that the global construction industry has learned yet, says the US Geological Survey’s Ross Stein. Last week at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union, he began a talk on “Defeating Earthquakes” by demonstrating the difference between the cube-centric structures we build all over the world and how much stronger those structures can be if you just add triangles in the corners. It’s a powerful demonstration of how simply having the technology to solve a problem isn’t enough. You have to get people to use it.
This whole video is worth watching and easy for laypeople to follow. And it’s just one of a huge collection of lecture videos from AGU 2012 that are now available online. They cover everything from the chemistry of lighting to the geology of volcanoes to the effects of space storms and solar flares. Very cool stuff!