First off, let me say that I particularly love Una’s reports, because they’re always about gearhead stuff. The engineer in me prefers these kinds of articles to the historical ones.
However, I wonder if I should nit-pick just a little regarding today’s Staff Report:
To me, it seems more proper to say it is the bolt that is under tension, as it is stretched by having been tightened. What balances this is the resistance of the joined parts, which are put under compression. Both compression and tension play into a fastened joint (they must come as a pair in order to maintain static equilibrium). But again, I think the fastened parts would be more accurately described as being in compression.
You are correct, that part is worded wrong. It was a result of editing from my report to the Web. The original report said this:
Sadly, I was out of the country last week without any net access to speak of, and wasn’t around to check things in the transition. I’ll have to see if we can fix that part of the text shortly.