Some of the omis- sions and oversimplifications are intentional but no doubt some of them are due to my own brute ignorance and lack of under- standing of the subject. Indeed it is only when the subject is stripped of its mathematics that one begins to realize how difficult it is to pin down and describe those structural concepts which are often called' elementary' by which I suppose we mean 'basic' or 'fundamental'. Indeholder 'List of Plates', 'Foreword', 'Acknowledgements', 'Chapter 1 - The structure of our lives - or how to communicate with engineers', 'Part One - The difficult birth of the science of elasticity', 'Chapter 2 - Why structures carry loads - or the springiness of solids', 'Chapter 3 - The invention of stress and strain - or Baron Cauchy and the decipherment of Young's modulus', 'Chapter 4 - Designing for safety - or can you really trust strength calculations?', 'Chapter 5 - Strain energy and modern fracture mechanics - with a digression on bows, catapults and kangaroos', 'Part Two - Tension Structures', 'Chapter 6 - Tension structures and pressure vessels - with some remarks on boilers, bats and Chinese Junks', 'Chapter 7 - Joints, fastenings and people - also about creep and chariot wheels', 'Chapter 8 - Soft Materials and Living Structures - or how to design a worm', 'Part Three - Compression and Bending Structures', 'Chapter 9 - Walls, arches and dams - or cloud-capp'd towers and the stability of masonry', 'Chapter 10 - Something about Bridges - or Saint Bénezèt and Saint Isambard', 'Chapter 11 - The advantage of being a beam - with observations on roofs, trusses and masts', 'Chapter 12 - The mysteries of shear and torsion - or Polaris and the bias-cut nightie', 'Chapter 13 - The various ways of failing in compression - or sandwiches, skulls and Dr Euler', 'Part Four- And the Consequence was.', 'Chapter 14 - The philosophy of Design - or the shape, the weight and the cost', 'Chapter 15 - A chapter on Accidents - a study in sin, error and metal fatigue', 'Chapter 16 - Efficiency and Aesthetics - or the world we have to live in', 'Appendix 1 - Handbooks and formulae', 'Appendix 2 - Beam theory', 'Appendix 3 - Torsion', 'Appendix 4 - The efficiency of columns and panels under compression loads', 'Suggestions for further study', 'Index'.I am very much aware that it is an act of extreme rashness to attempt to write an elementary book about structures.

Structures or why things don t fall