Dealing with Contamination: the Real Issues

In science and engineering, we owe much of the knowledge we take for granted to a few original thinkers. Some of them are quite famous: Archimedes and his bath; Galileo; Newton, who gave us gravity and the laws of force and motion; Euler who solved the problem of classic strut buckling; Rankine who gave us earth pressure theory and also thermodynamics; and Coulomb who gave us another earth pressure theory and also the unit of electric charge. But who was the 'Young’ of 'Young‘s Modulus’? Was he a noted engineer in days gone by, or was he an obscure loner who made the study of elasticity his life’s work? Who was he, and what else did he do with his life? A.N. Beal

Reviewing Codes of Practice Ron Hughes, writing from W. Horsley, Surrey, adds to his previous contribution (18 April ’00): What I had in mind when I suggested that the Institution should open the batting on the subject of Codes of Practice for the construction industry was that it should get together a small working party to look at the suitability of the present system and make recommendations for improvement or replacement.

The Structural Engineering Group at Bradford University is one of four principal research groups in the Department of Civil Engineering which was given a 5 rating in the last two Governmental research assessment exercises held in 1992 and 1996.