Bent Objects: The Secret Life of Everyday Things

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to guide (oneself) in a particular direction: [~ +object +to +object ]She bent her energies to the task. She bent herself to finishing her homework. [be bent on ] was bent on finishing the job.

Heller, M. A., Calcaterra, J. A., Burson, L. L., & Green, S. L. (1997). The tactual horizontal-vertical illusion depends on radial motion of the entire arm. Perception and Psychophysics, 59, 1297–1311. Plastics are made up of similar polymer particles, which is why many of them are also quite bendable and easy to reshape, although not all of them have as easily changeable a structure as rubber. Bendable or flexible materials are materials that can be bent out of shape or compressed without breaking, and can easily be returned to their original shape. Most materials have some degree of flexibility, under certain circumstances. While we don't normally think of metal or plastic as particularly flexible, you can make a flexible shape, like a slinky, out of both of these materials. Flexibility isn't so much about the material itself as the shape it's been formed into and what you need it to do: the massive steel girders used to build skyscrapers have to be flexible, or they'd break during earthquakes or extremely high winds!Smith, A. D. (2010). Disjunctivism and illusion. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 80, 384–410. The lesson for project professionals? By searching for ways in which to introduce modularity into your project, you will inevitably increase your chance of success. to force (an object, esp. a long or thin one) from a straight form into a curved or angular one, or from a curved or angular form into some different form: to bend an iron rod into a hoop. Künnapas, T. M. (1958). Influence of head inclination on the vertical-horizontal illusion. Journal of Psychology, 46, 179–185.

Flyvbjerg explains that successful projects always have a team who clearly understand what their purpose is, and then throughout the delivery phase, always keep one eye on how what they are doing will help deliver this. Important, timely, instructive and entertaining’ – Daniel Kahneman, bestselling author of Thinking, Fast and Slow Hamburger, K., & Hansen, T. (2010). Analysis of individual variations in the classical horizontal-vertical illusion. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 72, 1045–1052. It’s crazy, but the average practice in project management is a disaster, and good practice is an outlier,” says Flyvbjerg. But in new research included in his book, he documents which type of projects perform well and which don’t. He found that the best-performing projects are renewable energy projects, like wind and solar – and the reason for this is their modularity, he explains.It all boils down to how the particles within a given material are structured. In solid materials, the particles that make up a material are held within strong bonds, but these bonds can vary a lot in how tightly the particles are held together and how the particles can move within the structure. Generally speaking, the more that the particles in a given material can move, the more flexible the material is. The most flexible solid materials are made up of particles that are made up and held together in a way that allows a lot of movement - take for instance, rubber, which is known for being bendable. We'll be using this as our main case-study example to explain how this concept works. Metal: While most metals aren't very elastic, they can be very plastic under the right circumstances, such as when hammered very thin. This allows for them to be used in even more situations. From metal wiring that we need to conduct electricity to massive steel girders used in building construction! Thinking ‘right to left’ refers to the process chart – classically the Gantt chart – that is used in most project planning and management, where you have the end result or the outcome on the right, and then everything that needs to happen left of that,” he says. Here's a helpful list of a few common materials we encounter where elasticity and plasticity are a big part of their usefulness: Megaproject expert Bent Flyvbjerg and bestselling author Dan Gardner reveal the secrets to successfully planning and delivering ambitious projects on any scale.

All materials are elastic and plastic up to a certain point. It's important for people to understand how much so when they're trying to make something. For example, a building needs materials with a certain amount of elasticity so that if it's hit by something, it can absorb some of the impact without breaking. They also require plasticity to make sure that if the impact is beyond what the material can absorb without bending, that it bends more than breaking entirely. Shoemaker, S. (2006). On the ways things appear. In T. S. Gendler & J. Hawthorne (Eds.), Perceptual experience (pp. 461–480). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Finger, F. W., & Spelt, D. K. (1947). The illustration of the horizontal-vertical illusion. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 37, 243–250. Pathology the bends, [plural* used with a plural verb ] a painful condition caused by bubbles of nitrogen gas in the blood: The bends are sometimes a big problem for deep-sea divers. Mervis, C. B., & Rosch, E. (1981). Categorization of natural objects. Annual Review of Psychology, 32, 89–115.This is why even flexible materials can break. If the force applied to the material is too strong, it can damage the bonds between the particles so much that they completely split and the material breaks. When we bend the paper clip, the bonds between the latticed metal particles are stretched, and if they're put through too much tension, they snap. Even very elastic materials have an upper limit to how much they can be stretched before they break. McManus, I. C. (1978). The horizontal-vertical illusion and the square. British Journal of Psychology, 69, 369–370.