Catalog Search Results
Provides access to the printed True Book series in the form of eBooks. There are also accompanying videos and other activities to supplement the books. This is a great resource for elementary students, in grades 3 to 6, doing research on science or social studies topics.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh's bomb demolished almost half of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. Explore details of the building's design and specific ways in which various structural elements responded to the blast. Is it possible that modest changes to the steel reinforcement might have allowed the building to survive with only localized damage?
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
What would the Tower of Pisa be if it weren't leaning? Certainly not as attractive to tourists. That was the issue faced by the late-20th-century engineers who devised a way to reduce the tower's angle of tilt. Take a journey through the centuries to explore how various engineers tried to stabilize the leaning tower, but only succeeded in making the problem worse.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
One of the most epic engineering failures in history was the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940. Nicknamed "Galloping Gertie," the bridge undulated so strongly that thrill-seekers came from all over just to drive across it. Explore the inherent structural inefficiency of the suspension bridge, and why this bridge failed spectacularly only four months after its opening.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
When the Tay Bridge in Scotland was completed in 1878, it became the longest bridge in the world. Discover the behind-the-scenes details of the bridge design and construction, and how the failure of one single, simple connection triggered a chain of events that brought down a 4,000-ton structure.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
In 1978, a developer chose to build a hotel in Kansas City using a management technique called fast-tracking, in which construction begins before the design is complete. What can happen when each principal assumes that someone else has designed a critical structural connection? Explore the series of mistakes that led to the tragic collapse of two suspended walkways and the deaths of 114 people.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
What role should corporate culture play in the development of an airplane? Discover what went wrong in the development of Boeing's 737 MAX and how the flawed design of the airplane's flight control system led to 346 deaths in two separate crashes. Have we learned the apparently difficult lesson that prioritizing the corporate bottom line over technological excellence does not work?
7) Epic Engineering Failures and the Lessons They Teach: Episode 12,Stone Masonry: Beauvais Cathedral
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
On November 29, 1284, much of the Cathedral of Saint-Pierre at Beauvais collapsed without warning. Had this Gothic church simply exceeded the inherent maximum height of a stone structural system, as some historians have suggested? Watch fascinating demonstrations that both explain the function of the medieval flying buttress and point to the design flaws that most likely caused the collapse.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
One spring evening in the mid-19th century, a three-span iron bridge across England's River Dee collapsed just as a locomotive reached the middle of the third span. Railroad technology was only just coming of age, and this collapse was one of its most serious accidents to date. Discover how this accident inquiry led to improved bridge safety throughout the country.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
The Florida International University Pedestrian Bridge was created with long-span trusses made of reinforced concrete, using post-tensioning to prevent cracking. Cracks that appeared were said to be "not a safety issue"—until a truss collapsed, killing six people. Explore what led to this tragedy, including problems with the most sophisticated engineering tool of all—human judgment.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
In 1976, the American Institute of Architects presented an Honor Award to Helmut Jahn for his innovative design of the Kemper Arena in Kansas City. Three years later, a 43,000-square-foot section of the roof collapsed. Follow the forensic engineers as they painstakingly analyze the arena's innovative design and identify four major factors that contributed to the roof's collapse.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Go behind the scenes to discover what really happened in more than 24 epic engineering failures. Civil engineer and award-winning educator Stephen Ressler reveals the story behind each disaster by not only demonstrating the scientific and engineering issues involved, but also by examining the individual personalities and sometimes dysfunctional organizations that led to catastrophe.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
You know that if you don't maintain your car, it can stop working. But we have often overlooked that lesson when it comes to bridges. Follow the fascinating case of the Mianus River Bridge and discover how lack of maintenance caused its collapse in 1983, although the bridge had just been inspected. What happened to those pin-and-hanger connections? And exactly, whose fault was it?
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
The flooding of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005, was the costliest engineering failure in American history, and one of the deadliest. Discover the economic development decisions over two centuries that contributed to the disaster. And, learn how the disaster has stimulated a more sustainable approach to flood protection.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Within days of filling its reservoir, the Teton Dam began to leak. By the end of the day the dam had been breached and the reservoir poured down the Teton Valley in a tidal wave. Explore the potentially catastrophic effects of water moving through soil under pressure—whether in dams and levees or in the liquefaction caused by earthquakes.
15) Epic Engineering Failures and the Lessons They Teach: Episode 17,Stress Corrosion: The Silver Bridge
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
In 1967, the Silver Bridge in West Virginia collapsed into the Ohio River, killing 46 people. For 39 years, the bridge had been hailed as an engineering triumph with its cost-saving, innovative structural concept. Follow this fascinating story of forensic engineering as investigators eventually determined that the 1,965-foot bridge failed because one eyebar in a suspension chain fractured.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
What does a 19th-century British railway disaster have in common with the 21st-century destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans? All were engineering failures that resulted in important improvements in the engineering process. Discover the very human issues that contributed to poor engineering decisions in these three cases, with disastrous consequences.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
On June 10, 2000, Londoners celebrated the opening of a state-of-the-art pedestrian bridge over the Thames River. Two days later, the Millennium Bridge was vibrating so intensely that it was closed and did not reopen for more than two years. Explore the phenomenon of synchronous lateral excitation and learn how engineers fixed "The Wobbly Bridge" and prevented similar failures in other bridges.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
It's easy to imagine the technical difficulties that come with drilling an exploratory well miles below a floating platform on the high seas. Explore the step-by-step sequence of failures—flawed design decisions, careless oversights, deliberate procedural shortcuts, and prioritizing profits over safety—that led to the worst environmental disaster in US history.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Boston's John Hancock Tower was still under construction when winds of 75 miles per hour struck on January 20, 1973. By morning, 65 exterior glass panels lay shattered on the ground. Around that time, construction workers reported severe swaying of the structure during winds. Discover how tuned-mass damper technology became an effective tool for controlling wind- and earthquake-induced sway.
20) Epic Engineering Failures and the Lessons They Teach: Episode 6,Vehicle Collisions: Land and Sea
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
When an unexpected squall limited visibility to near zero, the Summit Venture freighter collided with Tampa's Sunshine Skyway Bridge on May 9, 1980, shearing off a reinforced concrete pier and toppling 1,300 feet of the bridge into the bay. Was this an engineering failure? Or was it just an accident? Discover how high-quality engineering design can account for and minimize accidental catastrophe.
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