Use of resources for studying civil engineering?

[Vizard007]

Hey guys. So I was wondering... how do you guys design your designs for the balsa events? Do you guys go with trial and error when making your towers? Or are you guys actually researching civil engineering before making anything or designing anything? Because I tried to find some textbooks online, but none of them seem to actually give information that would pertain towards Scioly. Do you guys have any recommendations? Thanks for your opinions/comments!

[googlyfrog]

I've always used trial and error. Researching the science behind it is probably a great idea, but you can definitely be successful without it. After a couple towers, you get a really good sense of what works and what doesn't work. By the way the tower breaks, you can usually tell what went wrong (assuming the tower didn't break because of it being wobbly or uneven), and build again keeping that in mind. Experimentation is perfectly fine, but if you can find a source, then it couldn't hurt to take a peek at it.

[Vizard007]

I see, thank you for your imput. I've found a book recently (but have been unable to actually read it yet) which might be useful. It's called Structural Analysis. Hopefully you guys will find it useful?