Two Angles

Audience 1: Parents of students

                Do you have a child? Are you concerned for his/her safety? At UCSD, the Structural Engineering department works hard to ensure the stability of buildings, which means that these buildings won’t fall apart. One of these buildings was not the most stable. In 2006, the parts of the concrete of the Geisel building were falling apart. As a Structural Engineer, I can explain some of the reasons why this would occur. For one, the concrete may have experienced excessive external load. This would cause the parts of the concrete of the building to fall off. This can easily be fixed by adding reinforced steel bars into the concrete. Today, with the new ACI 318 building code (the standard building code), the Geisel building is far more stable. Therefore, you do not have to worry about parts of the building falling off and hurting you child.

Audience 2: Students who go to Geisel everyday

                Looking up at the 110 foot building of Geisel Library, I recollect the SE 150: Structural Design class that I took at UCSD. Although this building looks to be in structural equilibrium (a fancy term for looking structural stability), the Geisel building was falling apart five years ago. Pieces of the building were falling off and the entrance was covered to prevent injury. As I look up at the top floors of the building, I shake my head. Had the designers of this structure known the appropriate amount of steel reinforcement in the columns and the walls, the building would not have started to come apart. Also, the stress, which is the internal resistance to the distorting effects of external forces, along the walls of the building would not cause pieces of the building to fly off and to potentially hurt students, including me.