Structural Engineering

What is a structural engineer you ask?  Well, in short it is a civil engineer that has chosen to set his or her focus on solving the problems related to humanity’s impact on the natural world. To further appreciate what constitutes a structural engineer you must define what civil engineering is.

Civil engineering is the profession of understanding and ultimately changing the natural and man-made world. All things related to the environment within which humanity lives out its respective lives fall under the purview of a civil engineer; from the playground swing set a child enjoys to the solid waste management systems aboard the International Space Station (IIS).

Civil engineering, the eldest of all engineering disciplines, finds its history in the artisans of the ancient world.  For millennia man has been, for better or worse, “improving” the world around him. Until relatively recently, we as a species have relied solely upon intuition and experience to construct our society.  Take for example the builders of the Great Pyramids at Giza and the Temple at Karnak. Those responsible for the construction of these once great and still very impressive structures were not engineers, but their works are still standing thousands of years later, how?  It is because their designs were based on their own experience and intuition, a skill that has set humans apart from all other species on the planet.  For example, if I asked you to place a ruler on a table such that it extends as far out from the edge of the table as possible without falling off, you would most likely move the ruler quickly about half-way over the edge, then more slowly until it starts to tip and then lastly, move it back just a tiny bit.  How did you know to do that?  It was because of your understanding of balance. How about if I asked you to build a tower that is wider at one end than the other, which end would you put on the ground? The wider end, naturally. Intuition and experience will get you far, but they can lead to unexpected results when things aren’t exactly what they seem; e.g., the (leaning) Tower of Pisa.

Modern structural engineering takes these observations and intuitions about the physical world and applies scientific methods of identifying the forces at work followed by mathematics to describe and predict the behaviors.  The primary difference between an artisan builder of the past and a modern structural engineer is proof, by way of mathematics.  The artisan will build his house in a fashion he believes will be sturdy against the snow and wind, while the structural engineer will design his house such that he knows exactly how much snow and wind the house can withstand before yielding, and if it does yield he can predict exactly where and how it will break.

Amongst structural engineers there is a little joke that circulates that describes the profession, like most professional jokes, it is likely lost on the uninitiated but it goes like this, “Our job is simple, civil engineers simply balance all forces to zero, because nobody likes a building that accelerates.” We can thank Sir Isaac Newton for this exhibit of dry humor.