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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: October 12th, 2023

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  • A lot. Most of the strength from a beam comes from the top and bottom, because these are the parts that have to stretch or compress most when the beam is bending. The middle part is contributing relatively little for strength.

    That is why metal poles are often hollow, that saves a lot of material and weight without losing much strength.



  • It makes a lot of sense. I make eye contact with drivers, because then I’m mostly sure they’ve seen me.

    With a driverless car I’d like to know it has acknowledged me, so I can start crossing the road. Otherwise I’ll wait until it has completely stopped. So there needs to be some sort of feedback that’s intuitive. Might as well be eyes.



  • That’s true in theory, but if you talk about megameters to a European you’ll get very weird looks.

    An engineer will understand what you mean, but still laugh at you.

    But it’s a non-issue for anything on earth, where you’ll have 40.000 kilometers at most. Not a lot of time is spent talking about x thousand kilometer.

    Any notion that a kilometer is “too small” is laughable.