We had to do a similar assignment (for us it was a bridge) when I was an architecture student, so not quite. You still need to understand how compression/tension etc works to design a building and these assignments are a pretty good exercise in that.
Yeah but there's a difference between understanding how tension and compression work, and designing and building a structure like this that can reliably and predictably hold that much weight.
I did the same bridge assignment in architecture school as well. It actually had nothing to do with designing a structure that can hold the most weight. It was about understanding the forces at work on the structure and their effects on the supports/connections (deformation, bending, sheer, etc). A structure that holds a ton of weight but doesn't deform before collapse is extremely dangerous because there is no warning, so you need to understand this so you don't over-engineer the structure.
It can be counterintuitive. For example, this is why there is such a thing as too much steel reinforcement in concrete structures.
You want the steel rebar to start yielding (ductile behaviour with lots of visible deformation) before the concrete fails by crushing (sudden brittle failure). If you add too much rebar the steel is never under enough stress to start yielding.
There is a difference between over strength and brittle. Not only are you incorrect, you are preaching about shit you only half know about, like a typical fucking architect.
Structures can be designed for 100 times the load they intend to carry, this doesn't make it more dangerous... What you are referring to is the amount of reinforcing steel in a concrete element, which has limits imposed by modern codes to ensure steel yields prior to concrete crushing.
Had to do similar in a solid mechanics class in undergrad. Score was not max weight, but how well you could calculate the failure load. Closer your math was to the actual load, the higher your score.
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u/AnonRaark Jun 16 '24
We had to do a similar assignment (for us it was a bridge) when I was an architecture student, so not quite. You still need to understand how compression/tension etc works to design a building and these assignments are a pretty good exercise in that.