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Ellis Abel Learns.

In my own words

Why I love building

An aerial photograph of the Vehicle Assembly Building under construction at Kennedy Space Center, its steel frame still open to the sky. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Building" page.
An aerial photograph of the Vehicle Assembly Building under construction at Kennedy Space Center, its steel frame still open to the sky. NASA · Public domain
  • It has to hold itself up first.
  • Every part is pushing or pulling.
  • Somebody drew this before anybody dug.

What it really is

A building is a structure where every part is either being pushed or pulled.

Three things to try today

  1. Build the tallest tower you can from paper.
  2. Find where it wants to fall.
  3. Add one thing to stop that.

For the grown-up reading this

Compression and tension. Naming which one each part is doing changes how a child sees structures.

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