5.8 Design problems Table 7 summarises the many design problems of the piers uncovered by Mr Law and his team. We have already seen the numerous fractured lugs in the remains of the bridge, shown in Author(s):
5.6 Casting defects The first class of defect would have been inferred from examination of fractures in the cast-iron columns, where, for example, the wall thickness would be exposed for measurement. However, some of the casting defects he mentioned in his testimony – and which were to gain some notoriety both in the popular press accounts of the enquiry and in later accounts – are difficult to describe in detail because he did not specify where they were found in the debris, or how exactly they had contribu
5.1 Overview The enquiry team set up by the Board of Trade, and sitting in Dundee Court House, held an initial session lasting several days starting on Saturday 3 January 1880. There were three members chaired by Mr Rothery, Commissioner of Wrecks. The others were Colonel Yolland, the Inspector of Railways, and Mr W H Barlow, president of the Institute of Civil Engineers, and a distinguished practising civil engineer. Henry Rothery was a mathematics graduate but trained as a barrister. He had been a
4.2 An introduction to the Board of Trade photographs It is important to bear in mind that these shots show the bridge remains in the state they were in just after the accident, and are almost exactly what the investigators would have seen when they inspected the bridge (see Input 8, linked below). Click 'View document' below to open Input 8 Disaster! The train receded into the darkness and the light of the three red tail lamps grew dimmer. Sparks flew from the wheels and merged into a continuous sheet that was dragged to the lee of the bridge parapet. Eyewitnesses would later recall at the inquiry that they saw a bright glow of light from the direction of the train just after it must have passed into the high girders section, and then all went dark. The train was timed to pass the Dundee signal box at 7.19 pm. When it failed to arri 3.4 Building the bridge The contract for the bridge was won by the firm of Charles de Bergue, and a contract signed on 8 May 1871, whereby the contractor undertook to have the bridge ready for traffic in three years at a price of £217 000. In the event the bridge was opened on 31 May 1878, by which time it had cost £300 000. Work started on the south bank of the Tay, with piers laid on to solid rock foundations. As the piers advanced into the estuary, foundations needed to be sunk onto the river bed, and cai 3.2 Background North of Edinburgh, in east Scotland, lie two great estuaries, the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Tay. The Firth of Forth begins at the ancient town of Stirling and runs 50 miles to the east, where it emerges into the North Sea. Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland, is situated on the southern bank at the mouth of the estuary 30 miles east of Stirling (Author(s): 3.1 Overview The Tay Bridge disaster came towards the end of a period of intense development of the railway system in the UK. The bridge had materials that were well known. Cast iron was used for the columns and wrought iron for the trussed girders. The construction of the bridge was, at the time, the largest single engineering project in Britain, the Tay estuary being about two miles wide near Dundee, and the bridge was the longest in the world. In the shallower approaches in the estuary, con Conclusion This free course provided an introduction to studying Engineering. It took you through a series of exercises designed to develop your approach to study and learning at a distance, and helped to improve your confidence as an independent learner. 5.6 Developing the Open University hard systems method When the writers of the course T301 Complexity Management and Change, the predecessor to T306 (the course from which this unit is taken), started in 1982 they had to decide what to include and what to leave out (just as we have). They started with the systems analysis approach of the engineers De Neufville and Stafford (1971), which had been developed in a civil engineering group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). De Neufville and Stafford defined systems analysis as â 5.2 What are systems approaches? An approach is a way of going about taking action in a ‘real world’ situation, as depicted in Figure 20. As I have outlined earlier, an observer has choices that can be made for coping with complexity. Here I am assuming that because this unit is about systems approaches, a cho 4.2 Articulating your appreciation of complexity Initially, I would like you to notice whether and how your appreciation of the phrase ‘managing complexity’ has changed since you started the unit. As you work through Section 4 you will encounter a number of ways of thinking about complexity that may be new to you, so it becomes important to record your developing understanding. To help you with this, return to your notes on Author(s): 3.6 Learning and effective action I claim that learning is about effective action. It is distinguished when I, or another observer, recognise that I can perform what I was unable to perform before. Following Reyes and Zarama (1998), I am going to claim learning is an assessment made by an observer based on observed capacity for action. From this perspective, learning is not about ideas stored in our mind, but about action. So what makes an action effective? Reyes and Zarama (1998, p. 26) make the following claims: 3.3 Appreciating your basis for understanding In my experience, the explanation that Fell and Russell suggest (i.e. that we each construct our own version of reality and therefore cannot be an objective observer; which in turn means we have to take responsibility for our observations and explanations) is challenging for many people. When I attend workshops where these ideas are expressed for the first time, people often become angry. You may be able to identify with them. If so, please try to use your discomfort productively for your own 11.1 Part 3: 1 Introduction I wonder if you experience complexity in your daily life? Perhaps you experienced the child-support case study as being complex, as I did? For much of the time I struggle to keep my head above water as I try to understand and manage the complexity I experience as part of everyday life. I find social commentator and cartoonist Michael Leunig's depiction of a solitary figure looking through an ‘understandascope’ (Author(s): 2.2 The nature of systems thinking and systems practice There are no simple definitions for either systems thinking or systems practice. It's difficult to find definitions that capture all the perspectives that the ideas carry for people who think of themselves as systems thinkers and systems practitioners. Most systems practitioners seem to experience the same kind of difficulty in explaining what they do or what it means to be systemic in their thinking. Through experience I've developed some criteria by which I characterise systems thinking, bu Acknowledgements The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions) and is used under licence. Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material within this unit: Course image: liz west in Flickr made available under Creative C 18.3 Characteristics of consumers and the market As well as the characteristics of an innovation affecting the extent of its take-up, the nature of the market and the purchasing behaviour of consumers can influence success. Some people will always try to be among the first to buy a new product – Rogers (2003) calls people in this group innovators (Author(s): 18.2.6 Encouraging diffusion In general, innovations that are perceived as having relative advantages, being more compatible, less complex, observable, and trialable will diffuse more rapidly than other innovations. 16 Part 3: Innovation You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: Author(s):
