Saturday, August 04, 2007

Surprise of the Day: Pont Structure Metallique!

Get a load of this Rue 89brainchild:

Du point de vue structure on peut faire un paralele entre ce pont et les tours du World Trade Center, les deux sont en structure métallique, en France on construit les ponts et les immeubles en béton même la tour Montparnasse a un noyau en béton et les prochaines tours comme celle de Marseille seront entièrement en béton, de la a en tirer une conclusion c'est peut être un peur rapide, mais on peut se poser la question.
Hey, I’m just asking questions, here!
From a structural point of view, one can make a link between this bridge [failure] and the collapse of the World Trade Center. Both are metal structures. In France the bridges and buildings are built from concrete, even the Montparnasse Tower has a concrete frame, and the next biggest tower like that in Marseilles will be entirely made of concrete. To leap to conclusions might cause fear, but one can still ask the question.
This idiot is clearly not an engineer. They economic limit of concrete is somewhere near 20 floors in most places, perhaps up to 40 at this point given the rising price of steel as a commodity right now. Looking around even a cittythe size of Paris, it’s obvious that the number of tall buildings around “Courageux anonyme” is pretty limited.

His rationalization reminds me of that Monty Python routine where they figure out that the woman couldn't be a witch because witches are made of wood and wood floats – or doesn’t. They had it about as straight as these “89-istas.” To begin with, no-one has built a bridge with span distances like that out of concrete for about 50 years, and when they do use concrete, it's in the form of pre-cast beams that are set on abutments like steel, and behave like steel. Applying non-engineering analogy based reasoning to an engineering problem is par for the course for your average conpiracist “truther.”

No comments: