While some of this discussion is technical, there are also poignant stories, like the tragic tale of the H.M.S.

The book also discusses the roles of the Poisson Ratio and Wagner tension field (which he explains) in dress design, how to keep boilers from exploding, and how to keep wings from twisting off airplanes (and how trying to keep wings from twisting off airplanes can cause even more wings to twist off airplanes). it became necessary to devise some kind of container in which to keep it.” So he starts with the structure of the cell, and goes on to skeletons, and why plants are often better armored than animals (weight of armor affects mobility) and why birds have feathers (they give the wing a better lifting shape without adding excessively to weight). Gordon, however, simply describes a structure as, “Any assemblage of materials which is intended to sustain loads,” and thus the book covers a broad range of subjects whose only connection is the application of the basic structural concepts of stress and strain.įor example, Gordon discusses design and operation of archery bows, why chariots had their wheels removed when they weren’t in use (because they tended to deform under loads), and the history of catapults - such as a Roman admiral who won a battle by hurling pots filled with snakes (which doesn’t have much to do with material science but makes an interesting anecdote).Įven farther from buildings and bridges, Gordon spends a fair portion of the book discussing structure in animals and plants.

So why did Elon Musk recommend an obscure popular science book? Given that the book is almost forty years old, is it still relevant and useful to today’s engineers? I’ll provide a brief overview here so that you can decide for yourself.Īs the complete title is, Structures: or why things don’t fall down, you might think that the book is specifically about buildings and bridges. There were over two dozen holds on the single copy in the local library system, and I had to wait over a year to get my hands on it. And I wasn’t the only one who came to that conclusion. Structures was one of only two books on Musk’s list that could be termed ‘technical,’ which caused me to think I should read it. In the forward, Gordon refers to the book as, “. Structures was published in 1978 and was written by J.E. Elon Musk has provided us with a list of fourteen favorite books that inspired him, and amid fantasy novels such as Lord of the Rings and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein is a book on material science entitled, Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down.

Structures by je gordon