Author:
Yeah, what was funny about that?
Rachel asked, “Hey Regular Dave, what’s the safety factor on a couch?”
“Sixteen,” he told her. Everyone laughed.
Safety is very very important in tech. You can screw around with the design, you can jury rig what you want, as long as it's safe. The fire in the Iroqouis killed over 600 people, you don't play with that.
Rigging (suspending things from the ceiling) is especially technical, and there's a lot of engineering involved. You have to know exactly how much what you are lifting weighs, but also what every component in the rig is able to hold, and then what the whole can hold. Much of this is ballparked, and then over designed. For instance, every knot that you put in a rope decreases the integrity of the rope by 50% in your equations. Is that based on the exact tensile strength of the rope, the efficiency of the knot, and how dirty the techs hands were when they tied it (which is actually a viable variable)? No. It's probably no more or less than 5%, depending on the knot. (There's math on that too.)
So riggers use something called a safety factor. The weakest element in your rig should be able to hold a factor higher than the most weight you might ever put on it. For the most part this is 8:1 (or just 8). The rig should be able to hold 8 times as much as the most weight you're planning to put on it.
So what's the safety factor on a 50 pound couch? 16 sounds about right to me.
(Yes, I know that the factor is not figured in to the ballast weights. Sarah was deliberately misunderstanding him.)
Comments
Its been interesting
Its been interesting so far. I kept waiting to see what the "Tech" part of the story was and was expecting the common use of the word (Technology or someone who works with technology) instead of the actual definition of technician that you used here (Someone who is trained or skilled in the technicalities of a subject)
Your right to explain the joke as it is one of those inside jokes that you would have to be part of the group to understand. Sort of like acronyms like SNAFU and FUBAR that were once unknown to the general public but were widely used in the military.
We the willing, led by the unsure. Have been doing so much with so little for so long,
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
Reminded
Doing some TSA stuff behind the college stages. Apart from not getting in the way of other specialists, our safety concerns were with keeping mains cables in good order, and not dropping amps on yer foot.
"Reach for the sun."