of cat-heads and catenaries

[Joel S. Berson]

You humanitarians must have neglected the second half of Arts and
Sciences.  I not only encountered the word "catenary", but I think I
had to solve problems involving them -- loaded and unloaded -- in
some physics or engineering course.

Joel

At 9/17/2010 11:03 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

>On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 10:22 PM, Laurence Horn
><laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> >
> > I'm pretty sure I've never used the word "catenary" and barely if
> > ever encountered it before this week's thread.
>
>The same is true for me. If I hadn't grown up in Saint Louis, where
>Saarinen's Arch is a big deal, of course, it's unlikely that I would
>be familiar with the word. It took me a while to understand the
>description. Like, WTF? How is an arch standing up like a chain
>hanging down? Impaired sense of spatial relations, I reckon. I've
>since understood.

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