how were bridges designed before, say 1850, sometimes way before, able to handle the weight of a ww2 tank?
Were they overbuilt by orders of magnitude, miracle of the arch, or something else?
In: Engineering
Survivorship bias. Before structural engineering was truly codified like it is today, you had a lot of variability in structures with a much larger range of over built and under built structures. The over built ones survive. The under built ones did not.
Latest Answers