Stephen Ressler

There needs to be a higher rating than 5 stars for this course. Ressler, a retired US Army Corps of Engineers General and instructor at West Point, is the best teacher I have ever seen. Not only can he explain complex subjects, such as how a nuclear reactor works or how the soil of a building site creates issues that can be resolved in various ways, he also provides demonstrations using ingenious models. Watching the water begin to flow under the model of the New Orleans flood wall, for instance, is eye-opening. You don't have to be an engineer or even interested in engineering to be pulled in and entranced by this course. But it's not all about engineering failures; there are also management failures that make engineering failures much worse, such as NASA's insistence to launch the space shuttle Challenger despite the cold temperatures or Boeing's fatal mistakes in first designing then gaining approval for the 737-MAX without telling pilots explictly what had been done to overcome the plane's tendency to stall because the huge engines had to be mounted more toward the front of the wings--due to a design miscalulation that went back to the inception of the 737. I only wish this course were longer. I would have loved to hear about Fukashima, or the Minneapolis I-35 bridge collapse, and of course now he could add the Titanic submersible. Please watch this course!… (meer)

It is always a pleasure when someone is telling you about something they love, and Ressler loves all the things man has built from the pyramids onward. This course could have been twice as long, and I would have still enjoyed it. Certainly my favorite part (and my daughter's, whose home schooling this was part of) concerned the various types of bridges. Ressler's models (where can I get a kit like that?) are wonderful in explaining the various forces that engineers must take into account. He also talks a lot about the shift from empirical engineering, such as done by the Greeks, Romans, and builders right up to the 18th Century, and the subsequent switch to engineering built on mathematics and, later, computer simulations. We see, in the collapse of the Hartford Civic Center roof, that the use of math doesn't make for a safer building if the builder doesn't perform the right calculations. Ressler touches upon other disasters as well, such as the Tacoma Narrows (Galloping Gertie) bridge, or the miscalculations that required a major refit to the Citibank Tower in New York City. He also describes how the collapse of the World Trade Centers has changed how tall buildings are now built. I could go on and on, but just watch the series. It isn't necessary to pay a lot of money to buy it from the Teaching Company. I watched it on Kanopy, which is one of the services my public library provides for FREE.… (meer)