I’ve had a bizarre phobia since I was young. I do not trust the structural integrity of most buildings and am always worrying things will collapse/break. One thing that really triggers my anxiety is when I can feel a floor shaking. If my one year old, 25 pound son can run by and make the floor shake, how can it hold substantially heavier items (like a fridge, washer, etc.)? Please only reassuring comments – I can’t handle this phobia getting any worse 🙂
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Strength has almost nothing to do with flexibility/stiffness.
A steel cable is incredibly strong but flexible as a noodle. A glass rod is as stiff as you could wish but easily broken by hand.
You’re worried about things breaking…that happens if the load gets bigger than the thing can hold. The safety factor of buildings is extremely high… they can hold far more load than they ever see in normal use.
Flexibility actually *helps* the building be stronger… it lets the load balance out and spread around to be carried by more of the structure. We don’t *like* flexibility, because we evolved walking on solid ground and it feels weird to us, so building designers intentionally make floors stiffer than needed to be to make us comfortable but this has nothing to do with structural weakness.
Building things to be both really strong and really stiff can be done… but it’s almost always extremely *heavy*. This is why concrete or stone buildings are so massive and stiff. Wood or steel construction is much more flexible, and light (“more airy”) but no less strong.
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