Ethical Issues from the Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse

Course Description:

This course will examine the ethical issues that arose from the 1940 collapse of the Tacoma Narrows bridge in Washington state.  This was one of the most dramatic bridge collapses in history, with fortunately no loss of life and little property damage other than the bridge itself.  The collapse took place less than a year after completion of construction of the bridge.  Out of this incident a serious ethical issue was illuminated for the engineering profession. Specifically, at what point is the profession’s theoretical and experiential knowledge insufficient to justify moving forward with a specific project or design scheme?  And in the presence of weak experiential knowledge, is there a practicable way to supplement the experiential knowledge so as to move the project forward?  In this course you will learn about how the engineering profession gained important new insights into the importance of aerodynamics in bridge design as a result of the ethical dilemma faced by the designers of the first Tacoma Narrows bridge.  This course is intended for engineers, architects and other design and construction professionals wanting to learn about the ethical issues that were raised by the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows bridge, and the lessons engineers learned from this major engineering incident.

Learning Objectives:

Upon successful completion of this course, participants will be able to:

• Understand the history of the project
• Understand the oscillation mitigation efforts
• Know the lessons learned