Earthquake-resistant building

Two entries on this list end in the same everyday word, and the engineer uses it in a sense the kitchen never does. Die Scheibe is a slice of bread or sausage, a pane of glass, a disc. In structural engineering it is a flat element that carries forces acting in its own plane, and that is the whole difference from die Platte, which carries loads pressing on its face and bends under them. The same concrete floor is therefore a Platte for the furniture standing on it and a Scheibe for the earthquake pushing it sideways. Die Deckenscheibe is that floor seen as a stiff sheet gathering the horizontal force, and die Wandscheibe is the wall that takes it down to the foundation. Neither is made of glass: a Wandscheibe is usually solid reinforced concrete, and in an earthquake it is the part that must not give way.