Building a better nail
PopSci’s Best of What’s New 2006
In 1995 a Clemson University graduate student named Ed Sutt took off for a spur-of-the-moment trip to the Caribbean. But beaches and rum drinks weren’t on the agenda for this civil engineer. Hurricane Marilyn had just torn through St. Thomas, and Sutt was part of a team examining how and why 80 percent of the island’s homes and businesses had collapsed in the storm’s 95mph winds.“The destruction was so complete in places that it was almost surreal,” Sutt recalls. “There were troops in the streets and military helicopters hovering overhead.” As Sutt moved through the wreckage of roofless and toppled-over houses, he was struck by the sense that much of the destruction could have been avoided. “In house after house,” he says, “I noticed that it wasn’t the wood that had failed—it was the nails that held the wood together.”
Go read the whole article, very interesting story of an innovation that will probably save countless dollars and lives.
(Hat tip: Volokh Conspiracy)
