truss no one

I couldn’t help thinking of my students when I read today’s dVerse prompt, “Poetics: build a bridge”.  I tell them truss analysis is just like Sudoku but more fun – just lay out your equations, fill in the gaps, and truss me, that’s all there is to it! Until the build and test, that is. 

Every member – tension or compression?
Every joint – apply Newton’s second.
Have you considered load distribution?
What external forces make a contribution?

~put theory into practice~

Embody your equations in concrete and steel,
Now do the forces balance, for real?
Have you proved yourself a truss design master?
Or will your bridge feature on Engineering Disasters?

 

ping… aaargh!

There is no face-mask for the brain,
no analgesic for this pain,
no way to keep at bay
the assaults of every day.
I try to isolate my mind,
from infection of this kind –
but each axis-of-idiocy hit,
fills my inbox with more shit.

_________

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but with a ping… Time to turn the laptop off and go outside! 

look up

You wouldn’t believe me if
I painted a sky this blue
But look up – there it is –
and every day it’s new.

 

With the last six months of drought, fires and then COVID, and now the current unrest in the US and the protests in Australia too, I find I’m turning more and more to my immediate surroundings for reassurance that the world is not ending.
Growing up in Melbourne, my prevailing childhood memory of the sky is drizzling grey. In the southern tablelands of NSW (away from the brown exhalations of Canberra) the sky seems to be almost always an astonishing clear deep blue – especially in winter. It surprises me and brings me joy every day.   

the great homebrew crash of 2020

Twenty-four bottles of beer on the floor,
Twenty-four bottles of beer,
They fell down the stairs,
Now there’s glass everywhere,
Twenty-four bottles of beer on the floor.