Subject:
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Re: New Civil Engineer letter
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.technic
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Date:
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Mon, 2 Jul 2001 14:20:52 GMT
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Viewed:
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822 times
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> The man has a point. The typical construction of an inexperienced student
> isn't likely to hang together very well, especially if it's built using tall
> columns of basic bricks, etc. And things that don't hang together don't
> demonstrate mechanical principles.
Yes, but...Lego is easier to work with to provide the physical reality of the
design. Take a wall, make it of 2x bricks non interlaced...and push a ball at
it from a height. See how the ball goes right through the wall...now interlace
the wall, and try the same stunt (use a ramp for the ball to roll down)- the
ball bounces off instead of knocking over the wall like dominoes.
I would tend to agree that Lego is NOT the best medium for use in demonstrating
real construction designs...after all, the tallest brick skyscraper was only 10
stories high, and one can do substantially better than that with lego.
The use of mechaical designs (trusses, ect) becomes more important as one
reaches the limits of the Lego system (large train bridges being my favorite,
and I am sure that I don't do all that good of a job building them...)
The problem that I can see is that one tends to need large quantities of bricks
to build stuctures large enough to require engineered designs.
James Powell
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