Let’s get this off to an educated start. Here’s a miscalculation for you. I’ve seen engineers do it before despite being taught better in engineering courses.
Let’s say you’re trying to get the cross sectional area of a tube in stress with an inner and outer radius. You cannot use this formula: pi() * (r2 – r1)^2, or pi() * (d2 – d1)^2 / 4. Because that’s not the same thing as pi() * (r2^2 – r1^2). That’s a miscalculation, and it’s the sort that can kill people (or over-design and cost money). I corrected the engineer I saw doing this.
The title of this article is LAPD bomb squad ‘miscalculated” weight of homemade fireworks when ‘controlled detonation’ went horribly wrong destroying armored truck and leaving 17 people injured.
Los Angeles police have admitted their bomb squad ‘miscalculated’ the weight of fireworks before a planned controlled explosion which went wrong last month, destroying the team’s armored truck and leaving 17 people injured.
[ … ]
The vehicle has an iron chamber which is designed to contain 25 pounds of explosives, and officers estimated they were putting in 16.5 pounds in to it, LAPD Chief Michel Moore said Monday.
But investigators later weighed the remains of the explosives and calculated that there must have been about 42 pounds of fireworks loaded into the device.
The resultant catastrophic failure of the armored chamber sent a plume of fire into the air, injured 17 people and shattered the windows of nearby buildings.
Chief Moore gave the update the investigation on Monday morning at the LAPD Headquarters and said an ‘apparent miscalculation’ and ‘human error’ led police to overload the containment truck.
“Apparent miscalculation.” He uses those words. I do not think he understands what it means, and it makes me wonder if these folks have ever calculated anything in their lives.
If they tried, could they drive the intelligence quotient of LEOs any lower than it is right now?
And why couldn’t they have driven the truck into the middle of a field rather than do this on a city street?
Tip: WiscoDave.