Word: paraboloid
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Thin sheets of saddle-shaped concrete typify Mr. Candela's architecture; a geometrician would describe them as sections of a hyperbolic paraboloid. Their most common application is in roofs for large buildings, since an inch-and-a half thick slab shaped in this way requires only one support for every 2500 square feet, far fewer than a flat surface would require...
...there are many different curved surfaces which an architect might wish to use in a building, and no single quality of the hyperbolic paraboloid is unique. One might naturally wonder why this surface should be any better than some other of a slightly different but equally pleasing shape...
...great advantage of the hyperbolic paraboloid is that, because of a rather devious characteristic of the surface, a carpenter building the form does not have to bend his wood. "I am not a mathematician," Mr. Candela asserts, "and this is difficult to explain." Perhaps the easiest way to understand the principle is to remember that at any point on a saddle a straight line may be drawn which does not leave the surface, as it would, for example, with a sphere. And where the geometrician can draw straight lines, the carpenter can nail planks...