In engineering we would hope to anticipate failures and prevent them rather than learn from failures after the fact. You courses provide excellent examples of mistakes and how we learned from them. Without taking on any liability, are there any areas of current civil engineering thinking that make you nervous?

If you had to pick one historical example of an engineering work that embraced the breadth of ancient civil engineering knowledge, what would that be?

Dr. Ressler, I have taken over 70 TGC courses and I must say that you are The Best instructor of the lot. Since I am educated as a physicist, spent my entire career in the High Tech industry (semiconductors), and am a history buff I am biased; but I think the unique combination of science, engineering and history in your courses is par excellence. Your models and demonstrations not only make for an excellent teaching method, but your explanations of the underlying principles is outstanding. It is also great how you include in the course guidebook actual problems to solve and a detailed description of the structures and engineering techniques used in each. Your approach to including all this reference information on top of the lucid explanations in your lectures, allows the student to delve into the subject at whatever level they wish. Outstanding by all measures; your courses are the Platinum standard for all TGC Science/Engineering/Mathematics courses to aspire to. Thank you for putting so much effort into your courses!!! Also, thank you for your service to our nation.

I'm a civil engineer who watches your courses with my 13yo son. He did not enjoy STEM in middle school but you have turned him back on to the subject. Thank you.

Your lecture on Mortise and Tenon Joints is posted below. But doesn't all the stress focus on the tenons, further weakened by the dowels. Why don't these structures just snap at the seams?

In the ancient world, the builders had limited materials, could they have built bigger structures?

Dr. Ressler, why is it that there are so few college courses in History of Engineering (opposed to History of Science)? What can we do to encourage colleges and universities to offer a course on this subject?

I would love to see you do a course on forensic civil engineering. I am always amazed looking at the twisted wreckage of a failure in a structure that anyone can come in and figure out the cause.

Do civil engineers and Architects sometimes have ... "serious discussions" about a proposed design? B-}

I enjoyed your course on structures particularly because of the emphasis on concepts and qualitative relationships. It reminded me a lot of the teaching style led by Prof. Harry Meiners at Rensselaer Polytechnic in the late 1960s. Conversely, the curriculum in engineering mechanics at the time was heavily influenced by tensors and matrix math. That was typically thorough and informative but much more difficult to grasp. Have you been able to successfully collaborate to bring your teaching methods to campuses other than at USMA?

Question: how did the Romans actually build the Pantheon dome? With centering? Love your courses and use them in my teaching - as does my daughter with her high school Latin classes

I live near Hoover Dam and have been amazed at the engineering and construction ingenuity that went into that project, and that it was finished two years ahead of schedule. I would love to see that and other engineering feats (such as the moving of the Abu Simbel Temples in Egypt) featured in a future lecture series.

Each age has its' own advances in structural engineering. What would you say is the most innovative example of the current age?

Regarding the Roman architectural designs, did Buckminster Fuller incorporate and even improve upon Roman engineering postulates in his geodesic designs? It seems that there's a common,recurring theme in hemispherical advantages around load balancing, structural integrity, and simplicity that seems to be intuitively sound and wondering if these earlier Roman engineering principals have not changed significantly in the modern era?

Having worked as a Civil Engineer for nearly 30 years, it seems like Civil Engineering is in kind of a rut. Considering that 99% of public works engineering is the everyday stuff of roads and utilities, there seems to be little applied advancement (trenchless pipe technologies seem to be the exception). California, for example, is still using the Hveem method for asphalt (developed in the 1930s when Model A Fords were on the roads), and the only published reason why they are finally switching slowly to Superpave, is that they cannot find anyone to manufacture, maintain, and calibrate the Hveem equipment. There’s a lot of pilot studies on various methods and materials, but they seem to not go much past that stage, a few lectures are given, and there is no compendium comparing the benefits and limitations of new technologies. So new tech seems to just die, and there is less incentive to innovate.
Considering the deteriorating state of public works in this country, and the increasing costs, is there any movement to correct this, and move things forward?

In your course you talk about how the ancients who preceded Newton and the understanding of classical physics depended on trial and error, passed down learning, and the "art" of engineering. Yet many of their structures (e.g. Roman bridges, Egyptian and Mayan Pyramids, Japanese Pagodas, etc) have lasted for centuries> Now that engineering is more science based do you think that the "art" and/or craftsmanship of classical engineering is being lost?

Has it ever been determined what ingredients made the Roman concrete used in many structures that are 2,000 years old last so long?

Can you give a bit of info on how modern math and computers have affected your field during your time teaching it? I can certainly guess there have been major changes - what do you think are the most significant?

How do you think the pyramids were built? I saw an interesting theory using flotation bags and a clever canal system within the pyramid structure

Without wandering into "Ancient Aliens" nonsense, is it possible that some ancient societies employed technologies that we've only recently rediscovered? (The Victorian worldview of history as smooth progress is challenged by the idea of falling back and forgetting in Dark Ages.)

How did the Romans build the multi-level aqueducts? Were they actually able to build scaffolding up THAT high?

Are there any plans to offer an additional course on civil or structural engineering in the future?

In lesson (22 ? - development of the catapults) you mention that the "composite bow was developed in the second millium BC.
Really that early?
Who developed that technology ? That's too early for the greeks.
Stepp nomads ? Assyrians ? Persians ?

We were in Athens recently. How was the Parthenon built?

Professor, what are the most durable (long lasting) occupied structures in the ancient world and how were they built? What are the longest occupied communities?