Jessica

“Forget about goals, focus on systems instead.”
― James Clear

“When a structure fails or seems in danger of failing the natural instinct of the engineer may be to specify the use of a ‘stronger’ material: in the case of steel, what is known as a ‘higher tensile’ steel. With large structures this is generally a mistake, for it is clear that most of the strength, even of mild steel, is not really being used. This is because, as we have seen, the failure of a structure may be controlled, not by the strength, but by the brittleness of the material. [...] the toughness of most metals is undoubtedly reduced very greatly as the tensile strength increases.”
― J.E. Gordon, [(Structuresor Why Things Don T Fall Down)] [Edited by J Gordon] published on

“What we find difficult about mathematics is the formal, symbolic presentation of the subject by pedagogues with a taste for dogma, sadism and incomprehensible squiggles.”
― J.E. Gordon

“To make strong structures without the benefit of metals requires an instinct for the distribution and direction of stresses which is by no means always possessed by modern engineers; for the use of metals, which are so conveniently tough and uniform, has taken some of the intuition and also some of the thinking out of engineering.”
― J.E. Gordon, Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down