Aquila Children's Magazine AQUILA Magazine Best Bits | Page 32

It’s always the little things, isn’t it? You’ve got your team in place, you’re ready to go and someone messes it
all up at the last minute. Well, it’s not the end of the world if we’re talking about a school presentation, but
when those microscopic miscalculations lead to an actual disaster, that’s another thing entirely.
Throughout history we have seen, time and time again, how a slip of the finger, a faulty formula or just
plain bad maths can lead to tragic consequences. Here are six of the very worst examples:
NASA’s Genesis
probe: Bridge over
troubled water:
Anyone got $260 million dollars to spare?
That’s how much it cost when the Genesis
probe crashed on its way home after a
three-year mission to collect solar wind.
Why, I hear you ask? Because someone
(I’m looking at you Stuart) put a pair
of parts in BACKWARDS. To be fair it was
probably a complicated build, but
backwards, really? It should be pretty straightforward, right?
Build a bridge, make it strong and job done.
But the engineers of the Tacoma Narrows
Bridge in the US state of Washington
managed to get it spectacularly wrong and
in November 1940, just four months after it
was opened, the whole bridge plunged
dramatically into the water below.
Scientists were able to retrieve some of
the precious samples after the probe
crashed down in the US state of Utah.
Further study revealed that the wonky
parts meant the probe failed to release
the parachute that should have helped
to slow it down.
Christopher
Columbus and his
awful maths:
So Christopher Columbus was many
things, an explorer, an excellent sailor and
finder of new worlds (erm, they really
weren’t ‘new’ now, were they? Ed) ,
what he wasn’t so hot on, was adding up.
The thing with Columbus is that he
wanted the maths to fit, so he just went
ahead and moved Japan on all of his maps.
Nice one, Chris!
When he embarked on his voyage to find
Asia, he managed to end up in the
Bahamas instead. Not downhearted at
landing on completely the wrong
continent, he promptly captured lots of
the indigenous people there and sailed
them back to Spain. Why was it a disaster?
His crew nearly killed him when supplies
started running low, but that wasn’t it. The
real disaster, of course, was saved for the
indigenous people. Subjected to nasty
diseases brought from Europe, they were
brought close to annihilation as a result.
What engineers had failed to take into
account was a phenomenon called the
aeroelastic flutter, a small but vital
equation that takes into account how much
a bridge is likely to move and twist in the
wind. With gusts of up to 40 mph (64 kph)
battering the side of the bridge, the cables
just couldn’t handle the vibration caused
by the movement, and they snapped.
A disaster for the good people of Tacoma
and the Kitsap Peninsula, but worse for a
small dog named Tubby, the only victim of
the bridge collapse, who was killed as the
car he was in slid into the water below.
(Poor Tubby! Ed)