Why do ships have cicular windows,why not square ones?
In: Physics
May I present to you the Romans with their new fangled *Teknologie* “The Arch”! Distributing the load it bears across many of its members maintaining compression along the entire structure.
It is known as a [Funicular shape](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funicular_curve)
>When evaluated from the perspective of an amount of material required to support a given load, the best solid structures are compression-only; with the flexible materials, the same is true for tension-only designs. There is a fundamental symmetry in nature between solid compression-only and flexible tension-only arrangements, noticed by Robert Hooke in 1676: “As hangs the flexible line, so but inverted will stand the rigid arch”, thus the study (and terminology) of arch shapes is inextricably linked to the study of hanging chains, the corresponding curves or polygons are called funicular. Just like the shape of a hanging chain will vary depending on the weights attached to it, the shape of an ideal (compression-only) arch will depend on the distribution of the load.
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