Failure in Many Forms

摘要

Auniversity classmate of mine once related that as a youngster he thought he could solve the world's energy crises by extracting fuel from excrement. This idea, which came from a mistaken understanding of how farmers were heating their barns from the farm's waste material, led to some interesting distillation experiments, which succeeded only in creating overpowering smells. With a similar sort of curiosity, Mark Eberhart developed a childhood fascination in trying to understand why things break. His enthusiasm also led to some interesting experiments, and it became a guiding force in his life. However, unlike much of the research in the field, which worries about when materials and structures fail and how to prevent them from doing so, Eberhart (now a chemistry professor at the Colorado School of Mines) continued to be interested in the why and how.