Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twistedsifter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 278 posts

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

#151

Post by omoikane »

I first learned about serpentine walls via splint, which is a linter for C. The serpentine walls were visible on the front page until 2020:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200521064022/http://splint.org...

The FAQ explains why they chose this logo:

   The walls are one brick thick, but because of their design are both strong and aesthetic.  Like a secure program, secure walls depend on sturdy bricks, solid construction, and elegant and principled design.
https://splint.org/faq.html#quest2

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

#153

Post by eimrine »

hammock wrote: post #5
HideousKojima wrote: post #2

If you follow the link in the post explaining the math behind everything, it says: "They use more bricks than a straight wall of the same thickness but they don’t have to be as thick."

In other words, a serpentine wall is stronger per amount of material used than a straight one. They also allow use of a single-thickness of brick without other supports

I would say like it is less prone to tipping over per amount of material. It is not stronger in the meaning of holding bullets. Source: tried to build a brick construction once.

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

#154

Post by finnh »

oniony wrote: post #82
hammock wrote: post #47

Corrugated cardboard just is a wavy wall, sandwiched in between two straight walls. You can also observe corrugated steel and its use in construction, shipping containers, etc. Because these are steel and stronger than paper, the sandwich layers are not needed

You can also peel the label of a tin (can) of baked beans in your cupboard to see the the ripples added for rigidity.

as a bonus, they make canned cranberry sauce visually appealing on the Thanksgiving platter :)

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

#156

Post by hinkley »

contravariant wrote: post #149
hinkley wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah I'm thinking of electricity.

A right isosceles triangle has a hypotenuse that's √2 (1.41) and 1/√2 = 0.71.

Stack Overflow seems to think it's around 2.4x, but I am not sure I could ever follow the math and I certainly can't now. I think the amplitude makes the difference here and SO is answering a different question, otherwise this article would be wrong and that wasn't my impression the first time I encountered this topic.

second edit: The article linked from this article says:

So a crinkle wall with amplitude 1.4422 uses about as many bricks as a straight wall twice as thick.

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

#157

Post by autoexec »

NavinF wrote: post #147
autoexec wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I suppose it's subjective but Crinkle Crankle is better because it sounds so ridiculous.

Ribbon Wall doesn't sound any more ridiculous than same-shaped Ribbon Candy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_candy) or Ribbon Cables (https://www.fxpstore.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/ribbon-w...), and ribbons don't call to mind atrocities or human suffering. Battlefields are terrible places where horrific things happen. That's not something I'd want associated with my own property.

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

#158

Post by wkdneidbwf »

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!

this is an overly cynical take. headlines are brief by necessity. nobody would read that and think that a curved line from A to B is shorter than a straight line between the same points.

the first paragraph explains it,

> these wavy walls actually use less bricks than a straight wall because they can be made just one brick thin, while a straight wall—without buttresses—would easily topple over

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

#159

Post by chrisweekly »

Retric wrote: post #109
DrBazza wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'space wasted' on an estate of many hundreds, if not, thousands of acres is minimal. Given that often the bricks used were made and fired on site, it definitely saved on resources and labour. There's a stately home close to me that has a very short run of one of these walls, and the remains of the old brick kiln up on the hill side. If you know what you're looking for, you can also still see the hollows in the gr…

It cost even less labor to use minimal bracing for strait walls, these are curved for athletics. I suspect they are imitations of curved fruit walls popular in the 1600’s before greenhouses took off.

"athletics" -> "aesthetics", right?

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

#160

Post by LegitShady »

pests wrote: post #152
LegitShady wrote: post #139

“Hackernews discovers first year university engineering statics/analysis from articles that are really just reposts of 3 year old reddit content”

Sorry, didn't realize you knew everything in the world already.

I avoid getting my knowledge of the world from reddit reposts, and yes, I did take first year statics, as well as structural analysis 1 and 2, wood design, concrete design, steel design, and masonry design.
Post reply on HN