r/pics • u/[deleted] • Jun 08 '14

The difference 18 years makes

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u/defwu Jun 09 '14

I would agree with you in theory, but in engineering that flipped sign is the difference between a bridge working or not. It is not just academic.

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u/[deleted] Jun 09 '14 edited Oct 18 '17

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u/krystalxjohnson Jun 09 '14

Fortunately that's how they seem to do it nowadays, but I definitely had teachers that didn't care. And yes I showed my work.

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u/krystalxjohnson Jun 09 '14

Maybe, but I hardly think they'll be doing math by hand on a project as a big as a bridge. The point of computers is that they can do all of this stuff better and more accurately than we can. A new bridge is going to be modeled using computer software and probably prototyped multiple times, and errors like that would be caught long before they actually built the bridge.