Understanding the World's Greatest Structures: Science and Innovation from Antiquity to Modernity

How ideas for buildings, bridges and towers transform from sketches to concrete reality; three essential qualities that make a structure great; the difference between seeing a structure and actually understanding it.

Exploring how two types of external forces act on structures such as the Chouteau Bridge in Kansas City; learning how the forces are related to equilibrium, the most important concept in the field of engineering mechanics.

Using the Simple Tension Test as a gateway to understanding the concepts of internal force, stress and strength; seeing the concepts at work in structures such as San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and Athens's Olympic Velodrome.

How materials profoundly influence the form, function and structure of great buildings, bridges and towers; using steel as a benchmark; comparing the structural properties of wood, masonry, concrete and iron; seeing the materials at work.

Building up, which is one of the most potent human aspirations supported by engineering; how it has been done from antiquity to the present day with columns; learning about buckling, a stability failure that occurs in certain columns.

Why beams are central to the aspiration of building across long distances; combining tension and compression; surveying beams in the Lion Gate at Mycenae and Norway's Raftsundet Bridge; investigating scientific developments.

Rigid frameworks composed of structural members connected at joints and arranged into networks of triangles; how trusses work to stabilize and support a range of structural wonders, including the Brooklyn Bridge and the Eiffel Tower.

An introduction to cables and arches; the examples of the Saint Louis Gateway Arch and the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge; breathtaking structural features that also have extensive, occasionally surprising, parallels.

A look at the most important loads structures must resist, including traffic loads and earthquake loads; using the iron building at Watervliet Arsenal in New York to analyze how loads are transmitted through structural systems along load paths.

Touring Ancient Egypt; the complex engineering of pyramids, including the Great and Red pyramids; stopping over at Ancient Greece; visiting the domed Treasury of Atreus; breaking down the structural system of the Parthenon.

Learning why the arch is the principal structural feature of ancient Rome; looking at detailed case studies that include simple bridges, triumphal arches, massive aqueducts and majestic public spaces.

Examining the roots of Gothic cathedrals in their Romanesque predecessors; focusing on several structural innovations at work in places such as France's Chartres Cathedral; these include flying buttresses and pointed arches.

Tracing the dome's evolution from the 1st century A.D. to the Renaissance; it is a journey reflected in the increasingly sophisticated domes of the ancient Roman Pantheon, the Hagia Sophia and the Renaissance-era dome over the Florence Cathedral.

Examining the development of arched bridges during and after the Industrial Revolution; how the Iron Bridge at Coalbrookdale paves the way for science-based engineering; how science contributes to increasingly sophisticated modern bridges.

Learning the science behind suspension bridges; looking at structural marvels; reliving the "Battle of the Cable," in which 19th-century engineers struggle over whether to build suspension cables from iron chains or steel wire.

A further look at suspension bridges; how the Brooklyn Bridge, the Severn Bridge and other bridges are designed to combat the second great challenge of record-breaking bridges, which is their vulnerability to wind-induced vibrations.

Professor Ressler shows how structural catastrophes produce two bridges that provide an opportunity to see and understand structure; gaining insights into the human element of engineering; the reasons structures turn out the way they do.

How iron and steel revolutionize building design; finding out the answer in a trip back to late 18th- and early 19th-century Europe and America; there, iron-framed structures set the stage for modern skyscrapers.

Learning the story behind America's "great skyscraper race"; the increasingly sophisticated buildings it produces; examining masterpieces such as the Wainwright Building, the Chrysler Building, the Willis Tower and the World Trade Center towers.

Witnessing concrete's versatility at work in an incredible range of structures: these include Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, the Salginatobel Bridge in the Swiss Alps and Dubai's Burj Khalifa, which is currently the world's tallest building.

Thin shells are unique structural elements that use curvature to attain strength and stiffness, seeing the three types of thin shells used creatively in buildings ranging from St. Paul's Cathedral in London to the Zeiss planetarium in Germany.

The need for roofs spanning large enclosed spaces leads to a startling number of new structural systems in the last 200 years; looking closer at long-span structural configurations in places such as the Houston Astrodome and the Berlin Hauptbahnhof.

Applying old concepts in new ways with a study of tension structures; exploring noteworthy examples, from the cable-supported roof of North Carolina's J. S. Dorton Arena to the suspended dish roof of Madison Square Garden.

Professor Ressler answers the question of what to do when one encounters noteworthy structures that are not included in the course; looking at suggested strategies for understanding any structure, great or otherwise.