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Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)

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Re: Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)

#141

Post by autoexec »

nonethewiser wrote: post #64

I see this a lot in the rural US with wooden fences but had no idea why it was done, but I guess its for the same reason (stability). Apparently they've done it since the 1600s. https://www.louispage.com/blog/bid/11160/worm-fence-what-is-... Still, this seemed totally unecessary until I realized this mean they dont have to put any posts into the ground. No digging holes, which would be really nice when you're trying…

The US is so bad at naming things!

A Serpentine Wall sounds better than a Worm Fence or Snake Fence.

Crinkle Crankle Wall is a bit more fun than ZigZag Fence.

A Ribbon Wall seems like a nice thing to have on your property vs a Battlefield Fence.

Re: Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)

#142

Post by zhte415 »

vharuck wrote: post #78

Soda cans also have a counterintuitive efficiency feature: concave bottoms. If a can with a flat bottom held the same amount of soda, it would be shorter and have less surface area, but its metal body would need to be thicker to withstand the same pressure. In the end, it'd require more aluminum. https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/Science-Notebook/2015/0414... ^Probably not the best article for this, but it was easy t…

Aluminium's also more expensive than steel but experiences sufficiently less breakage to justify the price.

Re: Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)

#143

Post by pm215 »

travisgriggs wrote: post #137
geeky4qwerty wrote: post #26

This feels a bit like diet clickbait... "use fewer bricks than a straight wall"* *A straight wall of the approximal strength and length of a wavy wall, not just length. My counter would be that from a practical perspective the amount of space wasted by the wavy design seems to negate the usefulness of the design. Probably makes the lawn crew dizzy when mowing it too!

Amen to this. In a tabloidish sense. I read the title and thought "duh". Maybe others were intrigued and clicked, but for me, this is just obvious. I had lots of legos, and own more now as a grandpa than, er, uh, I should. I guess spatial reasoning about bricks just is second hand at this point. What the article likely leaves out, is that the all of the "corner only" touch points are going to create a more "pourous"…

You can see from the photos in the article that the amount of waviness is not so large as to result in large angles between adjacent bricks -- the usual mortar between bricks connects them and doesn't even look like it's all that much larger a mortar join than for a straight wall.

Re: Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)

#144

Post by gowld »

tln wrote: post #90
tonmoy wrote: post #79

Not sure about the actual function that defines the wave, but let’s assume they are convex and concave semi circles. Then to make a wall of length L with bricks of l length, we need pi L/l number of bricks. The linked Reddit post says a straight wall needs to be 2 bricks wide to have the same length, which needs 2 L/l number of bricks which is fewer than the wavy walls

Article links to this post with another derivation. https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2019/11/19/crinkle-crankle-ca... I'd like to know if this wavy wall technique requires non-square bricks to be stronger. And is it stronger against sideways forces along the concave and convex sections. If it's only the same strength as a straight wall then I'd think it'd be worse as a retaining wall?

Corrected link: https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2019/11/19/crinkle-crankle-ca...

Re: Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)

#145

Post by Cthulhu_ »

vharuck wrote: post #78

Soda cans also have a counterintuitive efficiency feature: concave bottoms. If a can with a flat bottom held the same amount of soda, it would be shorter and have less surface area, but its metal body would need to be thicker to withstand the same pressure. In the end, it'd require more aluminum. https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/Science-Notebook/2015/0414... ^Probably not the best article for this, but it was easy t…

Same with cans, corrugated sides, tops and bottoms are for strength and pressure resistance. Actually most corrugated anything is done so for strength.

Re: Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)

#146

Post by dang »

Related:

Crinkle Crankle Wall - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33155781 - Oct 2022 (1 comment)

Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25359550 - Dec 2020 (1 comment)

Crinkle Crankle Wall - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21554986 - Nov 2019 (56 comments)

Re: Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)

#147

Post by NavinF »

autoexec wrote: post #141
nonethewiser wrote: post #64

I see this a lot in the rural US with wooden fences but had no idea why it was done, but I guess its for the same reason (stability). Apparently they've done it since the 1600s. https://www.louispage.com/blog/bid/11160/worm-fence-what-is-... Still, this seemed totally unecessary until I realized this mean they dont have to put any posts into the ground. No digging holes, which would be really nice when you're trying…

The US is so bad at naming things! A Serpentine Wall sounds better than a Worm Fence or Snake Fence. Crinkle Crankle Wall is a bit more fun than ZigZag Fence. A Ribbon Wall seems like a nice thing to have on your property vs a Battlefield Fence.

I'd much rather have a Battlefield Wall on my property in the US than a Ribbon Wall or Crinkle Crankle Wall. The latter two sound ridiculous. I really like "Serpentine Wall", but it sounds a little too technical for everyday conversation with nontechnical people

Re: Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)

#148

Post by dang »

gowld wrote: post #144
tln wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Article links to this post with another derivation. https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2019/11/19/crinkle-crankle-ca... I'd like to know if this wavy wall technique requires non-square bricks to be stronger. And is it stronger against sideways forces along the concave and convex sections. If it's only the same strength as a straight wall then I'd think it'd be worse as a retaining wall?

Corrected link: https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2019/11/19/crinkle-crankle-ca...

Thanks! I've corrected the link in the GP comment.

Re: Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)

#149

Post by contravariant »

hinkley wrote: post #140
contravariant wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Semicircles seem excessive. At no point does the wall have an angle over 45 degrees, so a semi-circle which would be at a 90 degree angle for every inflection point seems way too wavy. A sine wave is probably closer, which would give an arc length of sqrt(1+cos(2pix/L)^2). This has no reasonable closed form I can find but it seems like it would be about 21% longer than a straight line. Edit: Also a semicircle is pi/2…

Sines are about 1/.7 (40%) longer aren’t they?

What would be about what you'd get if you made a sawtooth out of straight sections, pretty sure that's quite a bit longer than a sine wave would be.

Re: Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)

#150

Post by nonethewiser »

bin_bash wrote: post #89
nonethewiser wrote: post #64

I see this a lot in the rural US with wooden fences but had no idea why it was done, but I guess its for the same reason (stability). Apparently they've done it since the 1600s. https://www.louispage.com/blog/bid/11160/worm-fence-what-is-... Still, this seemed totally unecessary until I realized this mean they dont have to put any posts into the ground. No digging holes, which would be really nice when you're trying…

it's not for stability, it's because it doesn't require posts so it's cheap and quick

> it's not for stability, it's because it doesn't require posts

That’s stability

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