Most structural engineers are a lot less uplifting than this.
Source: I'm a structural engineer.
this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
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Are you saying structural engineers struggle to uphold mental structural integrity?
No, but a lot of us are more prone to just doing everything ourselves rather than communicating and working together in a big team.
High yield stress!
Is life really just small beams, resting on bigger beams, resting on columns? Is that all there is every time?
Often we achieve very uplifting things with a huge amount of diligent hard work and planning.
It's rarely uplifting in the arty/poetic/slightly "wishy washy" sense of the OP though.
If you want a specific example, my last project was a big concrete box bridge (6000t), it was built off to the side of the railway and pushed into position using enormous strand jacks. This allowed the railway to remain open apart from ~10 days over Christmas. It took 3 years to do all the design and construction including the temporary works design (construction methodology); all the planning paid off because it was installed successfully, within tolerance and on programme.
The bridge will last at least 120 years and will allow more rail freight instead of road transportation, which has environmental and social benefits.
We designed the bridge so that you could install overhead electrification in future if the rest of the network was upgraded (so you could use electric rather than diesel powered vehicles).
Basically, you achieve impressive things by doing a lot of hard technical work. It's a bit of a different mindset to writing poems about beams sharing loads.
And here I thought this was science_memes, and not bad_engineer_poetry.
Therapist I know once told me that she always tries to tailor her advice into a form her patient is familiar with.
With a fanboy she'll talk about Star Trek shields and Superman kryptonite.
With a musician she'll talk about harmony and tempo.
Great communication but I'd be curious to hear about the times it didn't work or even backfired.
I think therapists would have some great standup material. Their drinking sessions would be fantastic
i put a sign in my kitchen that says: never put sheer weight on non-reinforced concrete
thanks rocz
This sounds like something Uncle Iroh would say.
If a member fails it is in fact because it is too weak
"Too weak" for the specific load applied to it, i.e not supported/ aided enough by its community of members
There is the possibility of misconfiguration, but ultimately, a member can be too weak even if the configuration is correct.
But, according to the little poem, would we not say thst member was "too isolated"? E.g bearing too much of the load by itself when it would have been more responsibke to make neighbouring members bear the load?
No, we would not. The beams have a loading that they must adequately support. They have a span that is dictated by the column spacing.
You cannot just throw in supports (i.e., columns, bracing) everywhere to reduce the span until it works, otherwise you impact the usability of the building space and drive up the cost of construction.
Reducing the beam to beam spacing means you are increasing the number of structural elements and therefore cost, and probably also using the material inefficiently. The expensive part of a beam is the connection, and you typically want to reduce the number of connections and crane lifts as much as possible.
Anyone can build a bridge that stands, but only an engineer can build one that just barely stands.
Similar concept with therapists
What am I supposed to understand from "forces never dissapear they only travel" ?
It seems to just feed into the more important "loads are never avoided" lines.
Or are they just highlighting the conservation of energy.
This is dumb