Five years ago this week, tornadoes swept through the Huntsville, Alabama area. Today, I look back on the disaster by reposting my May 30, 2011 account of how my family, business, and community fared: “ÆtherCzar is Back, Reporting on the North Alabama Tornadoes.” I have updated the post to remove […]
Disasters
9 posts
An American engineer must overcome the objections of environmentalists as well as the machinations of terrorists to complete a tunnel under the English Channel on time and under budget. Robert Byrne’s The Tunnel (1977) is an action-thriller in an engineering setting. This was Byrne’s first engineering novel. Writing in Behold […]
An engineering consultant (who specializes in failure analysis) must remain true to his independent judgment when his client and his employer both seek to cover up evidence of dangerous problems in a mid-town Manhattan skyscraper. In his 1984 novel, Skyscraper, Byrne describes an intricate confluence of corruption, corner-cutting, and poor […]
A young engineer applies innovative analysis to determine that a dam designed by his firm’s most senior engineer is in imminent danger of collapse and then must take matters into his own hands when his findings are ignored. Robert Byrne’s The Dam (1981) pits the analysis of a brilliant but […]
After a famous wooden roller coaster injures passengers with the violence of the ride, an engineer hired to evaluate new safety modifications must analyze and diagnose a disturbing series of malfunctions before the grand re-opening. Thrill features an engaging cast of characters: the stalwart and straightlaced midwestern engineer, the mad […]
Few novels capture the drama, the passion, and the excitement of engineering. To do justice to the subject, the author must be conversant with engineering science and practice. In addition, the author must write with sufficient power and clarity to make the relevant technical details clear to a non-technical audience […]
Here’s a selection of some of the most interesting features we’ve seen on the Internet this week: Physicist Frank Tipler observes that a couple of the most prominent physicists – including Einstein and Feynman – owe their success not so much to raw intelligence or “brightness,” but rather to an […]
On this day May 4, 1988, a massive explosion (comparable to a small nuclear blast) at the Pacific Engineering Production Company of Nevada (PEPCON) rocked Henderson, Nevada, just outside Las Vegas. 4000 tons of aluminum perchlorate (an oxidizer for rocket fuel) detonated, killing two and injuring 372. The first explosion […]
Watt’s Up With That has a detailed first hand report of the oil rig fire from geologist Jimmy Haigh, a commenter at the site. The report includes some spectacular photos of the rig as it burned and sank in 5000 feet of water. Eleven men are missing and will probably […]