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?

 

Easter egg hunt – nerd style

Easter Sunday, such a fun day,
watch the children run –
they need to solve the puzzles before
their chocolates melt in the sun.

When my kids were very young, we used to hide Easter eggs for them to find in the little fenced-in yard behind the house. But once they were old enough to read, we set them clues written on strips of paper to follow to find their eggs. Each clue is a puzzle that they need to solve to get to the next egg, with the next clue wrapped around it, and an Easter bunny at the end.

seven colours, a thousand layers

I usually try to be polite on WordPress. I don’t have a go at people whose values and belief systems are very different from mine, and I try to not let those differences get in the way of enjoying a good piece of writing. But the reality is I’m a scientist, and an educator, and there are certain things that really irritate me.

stuck in the middle, by blue

For dVerse’s prompt: ‘true colours‘.
The challenge was to write from the point of view of a colour…

All across space,
we travel as a pack,
none draws ahead
and none lags back.
But once we meet
an interface
ah, that changes,
how we race.

Obliquity II : turn the upper cheek

From summer downunder, for Eugi’s weekly prompt “winter”.  So great to have these prompts back! Thanks Eugi!

Mother earth,
your buttocks are scorchy!
It is time to turn us
away from the fire.

For my northern hemisphere friends – hang in there, the Earth will be turning her upper cheeks to the sun soon, and you’re welcome to it.  (And if you’re thinking winter is when you’re further from the sun, you might want to read Obliquity.)

cold moon, distant earth (tanka)

For Frank’s Haikai challenge #171 “cold moon”

Sundered by violence,
circling, locked in a dance, she
always shows one face
though her partner turns away,
as they drift slowly apart.

one on r-squared

Proximity trumps everything.
How else can a ball of grey basalt
outshine the stars?

Forces By Demons (FBDs)

A follow-up to Friction does not oppose motion, for Shruba and the Twisted Mouse:

Forces by demons,
and by engine elves,
and forces of motion
belong on same shelves.

Friction does not oppose motion!

You can’t, of course
walk or drive, with
no friction force.
Please tell your kith
and tell your kin:
You can’t begin
without friction.

dot or d?

A little bit Sunday afternoon nerdity: 

Newtonian notation
is fine for the neat of hand,
but for those a little messy
Herr Leibniz is our man!