Reddit reviews Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail

Strunk and White's The Elements of Style

Salvadori's Why Buildings Stand Up and Why Buildings Fall Down

Tufte's Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative , especially the excerpt Visual and Statistical Thinking: Displays of Evidence for Making Decisions.

I was thinking the same thing. But, your comment also reminded me of this book that taught me quite a bit, and well, you might enjoy too:

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Buildings-Fall-Down-Structures/dp/039331152X

>Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail

>The authors examine buildings of all kinds, from ancient domes like Istanbul's Hagia Sophia to the state-of-the-art Hartford Civic Arena. Their subjects range from the man-caused destruction of the Parthenon to the earthquake damage of 1989 in Armenia and San Francisco.

One thing they cover is how buildings need to be able to flex as well.

I still agree with you, and I do wonder how badly damaged most tiny homes would be if they had to travel a mile down a rural road or the same mile over a pothole ridden downtown. This bus conversion too.

There’s a great book, Why Buildings Stand Up, and its follow up, Why Buildings Fall Down.

edit: added links to Amazon, and switched the chronology.

Have you checked out /r/woodworking?

Depending where you live you could probably find some wood working classes. And as you probably know there are a ton of woodworking channels on YouTube explaining how to make all sorts of things.

Have you studied Japanese Timberfaming at all. That's a pretty neat mix of architecture and wood working.

If you want to learn some softwares SketchUp would be a good start, you should be able to find a way to get it for free as a Student, maybe a teacher could help. There is also Revit and AutoCad you can find good courses for a lot of these things on Lynda or Udemy or just YouTube, there is Blender for 3D modeling also, which is free and has lots of lesson on YouTube.

If you are interested in the structural things there are these two books you might like: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Buildings-Fall-Down-Structures/dp/039331152X

If you want feedback on your work post it here, most people are pretty polite and give good feedback. If you look through past posts you will see a lot of students showing their work or sketches.

Have you considered asking an architect if you can hang out at their office?

Getting a weekend job at a construction company? Just hanging at a job site and cleaning you would learn a lot.

As another person posted the DK Ching books are a great place to start.

You might also look up 30x40 Design, Matt Risinger/The Build Show, and Timeless Homes on YouTube.

If you find yourself looking for anything specific or a book on some topic feel free to PM anytime.

Anything structural/architectural is going to be a little tough at that age/price. For toys, the best I can think of is a K'Nex Bridge Set which explains some good structural principles. Unfortunately it's designed for grades 3-5.

Maybe Why Buildings Stand Up and Why Buildings Fall Down? They're a fun book combo that explains a lot of basic architecture and what happens when things go wrong. Gets a little technical but a high school student interested in physics should be able to get through it.

If you think he might be interested in computers/electrical, an Arduino starter kit would be fantastic

Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail.

I would urge you to read Henry Petroski's Design Paradigms along with Levy and Salvadori's Why Buildings Fall Down. Resolving questions of structural failure is not a simple matter of fact checking and can actually ride on theories which engineers did not know were correct (or correct under all circumstances) until after multiple failures.

I am in complete agreement with the notion that the liberal arts and hard sciences have differences. However those differences are not nearly so stark as you suggest. Further, it is difficult for me to find an incentive to join the discussion on epistemology if your framing forecloses the bulk of my argument.

If your just looking for a quick read on the subject this book will fill you in...

TL;DR;
Boils down to the fact that a plane flying into the side of a building does pack one hell of a kinetic wallop with enough energy to rip the plane apart and peel away the fire proofing around the steel columns...

Add burning jet-fuel and the large weight of the remaining floors above and they are bound to fail. The beams don't need to melt but will be likely to fail since the material will be weaker with the increase in temperature.

Then you get the extra oompfh from the floors falling downwards and the building has a complete failure.

Here's another engineering primer book: Why buildings stand up

Easily accompanied by: Why Buildings Fall Down

read Why Buildings Fall Down http://www.amazon.com/Why-Buildings-Fall-Down-Structures/dp/039331152X

https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Software/dp/0735611319

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0226458121

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0226750213

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0201835959

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393306763

https://www.amazon.com/dp/039331152X

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393061329

this book was useful structure and architecture http://www.arch.mcgill.ca/prof/sijpkes/arch-struct-2008/book-1.pdf
Written by Edinburgh University's structure's professors in the Arch dept, so is very good at describing the 'why' not the 'how to do the maths'

and

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Buildings-Fall-Down-Matthys-Levy/dp/039331152X

For Civil / Structural engineers:

Why Buildings Stand Up

Alternatively

Why Buildings Fall Down

> Nobody would blah

Nobody would do orbital insertion calculations using the wrong units, losing a spacecraft.

Nobody would follow procedures and delay stopping a train when part of a wheel is embedded in an armrest, killing 101 and destroying a bridge.

Nobody would cut corners on repairing nuclear reactor coolant lines, causing them to disintegrate when an earthquake struck in an earthquake-prone region. Disintegrated coolant lines led to a LOCA, and some Fukushima reactors were a lost cause even before the tsunami hit.

Nobody would light a cigarette in a car while huffing propane, yet I knew someone who did.

What else would nobody do? Because I can come up with a huge number of additional examples. The more you know, the harder it is to be ignorant. I think you are not only ignorant, but also speculating - which is not good.

Read why buildings fall down. If you do, it will be a lot harder for you to pigeonhole things as so unlikely that we need not concern ourselves with them, or for you to say that it's fine to take mental shortcuts.