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by elteto 181 days ago
Just a small nitpick: the Tacoma Narrows bridge didn’t collapse because of resonance but because of flutter. It’s a common misconception.

For resonance the external driving force must match the resonance frequency of the system, but wind is rarely/never purely sinusoidal.

4 comments

The article covers this:

> Follow-up 2: Yes, I know that the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse was not the result of resonance, but I felt I had to drop the reference to forestall the “You forgot to mention the Tacoma Narrows Bridge!” comments.

Is flutter a derivative like jerk?
The derivatives following jerk are snap, crackle, and pop:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth,_fifth,_and_sixth_deriv...

Ask me how I know you didn’t read the whole article!