Blogs

It's 100 degrees outside. Your steering wheel is approximately the temperature of the sun. The air conditioner is doing its best. Then you see it. A section of pavement ahead looks like somebody pushed the road together from both ends and made it pop upward. Sometimes it happens fast enough to become a traffic hazard. The road buckled. But why? Concrete looks pretty solid. How does a material strong enough to carry tractor-trailers suddenly decide to stand up in the middle of the highway? The sh …

Cranes are impressive machines. They can pick up steel, concrete, equipment, materials, and loads weighing more than most of us would ever want to calculate while standing underneath them. But look at a crane closely and you'll notice something interesting. While the crane is lifting a massive load on one side, there's often a massive amount of weight hanging off the other. Which seems a little ridiculous at first. We're already asking the crane to handle thousands of pounds. Now we're deliberat …

There are certain things in life we expect to move. Cars. Elevators. Roller coasters. A bridge carrying thousands of vehicles several hundred feet above the ground is not usually on that list. But bridges move. They expand. They contract. They flex under loads. They react to wind. Some move several inches as temperatures change. And that's not necessarily a problem. In fact, trying to stop a bridge from moving could create a much bigger one. Welcome back to Why Is It Built Like That?, where we'r …

If you've ever been near the top of a skyscraper and thought you felt the building move, you probably did. Before you start looking for the stairs, that's usually a good thing. Skyscrapers are designed to move. It sounds completely backward. We spend our careers making structures strong, stable, plumb, and secure. The last thing most people want to hear while standing 70 stories above the ground is, "Don't worry. The building is supposed to be moving." But when you're building hundreds or even t …

Construction is full of things that look wrong until you understand why they're right. A skyscraper moves in the wind. A bridge has gaps in it. Concrete is intentionally cut after it's poured. Old brick walls let moisture move through them. A crane lifts enormous loads while a giant stack of weight hangs off the other end. Roads buckle when it gets hot. And somewhere along the way, somebody decided manholes should be round. Most of us walk past these things every day without giving them much tho …