[ExI] puzzle?

[spike at rainier66.com]

…> On Behalf Of Will Steinberg via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] puzzle?

 

 

 

On Mon, Aug 1, 2022, 1:17 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

>>…Ran across this:  "A wavy brick wall takes fewer bricks than a straight one."  Dunno if that is true.  You?  bill w

 

 

>…It doesn't really make sense in a vacuum, it's because a *freestanding* straight brick wall needs multiple layers while a wavy one can stand on its own with just a single layer.  These days I think most people would imagine a brick wall as part of a house, so the topic in question is confusing in that conception

 

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Ja, what Will said.

 

Being a mechanical engineer, I was going to offer the example of corrugated aluminum (for roofing.)  The corrugations allow a panel to be thinner and lighter than a non-corrugated sheet and still meet the strength requirement.  So that would be the example offered by a prole (me) who is more comfortable with isotropic materials such as metals, rather than bricks which are highly anisotropic (bricks are hell-for strong in compression, not so much in bending moment stress.)

 



 

Knowing the principle of the wavy brick wall, this is a retaining wall I built in my back yard about 25 yrs ago.  I hadn’t thought of it as a wave, but rather as an integral sign.  The region to the left of the wall is soil about 2 ft higher than the sidewalk, grassy area on the right is a golden ratio ellipse, so the wall is an integral sign with the grass golden ellipse as the upper limit of integration.

 

We math geeks build stuff like this.

 

spike

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