S1.E4

Structural Corruption

Episode aired Apr 21, 2006
TV-PG
1h

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

Peter MacNicol and David Krumholtz in Numb3rs (2005)

The mysterious suicide of a brilliant but unfocused CalSci engineering major leads Eppes and Charlie to the site of an iconic building.The mysterious suicide of a brilliant but unfocused CalSci engineering major leads Eppes and Charlie to the site of an iconic building.The mysterious suicide of a brilliant but unfocused CalSci engineering major leads Eppes and Charlie to the site of an iconic building.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.4/10

432

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Photos15

+ 10

User reviews2

7.4432

Featured reviews

8Hitchcoc

Bad Building

When a college student studying under Charlie is writing a thesis on a significant building, he suddenly jumps off a bridge. The story becomes a tug between suicide and murder. In the process, we learn a lot about architecture and what a cutthroat business the major players face each day. The math here is more accessible than in some of these episodes.

Storyline

Edit

Did you know

Edit

Trivia
The discovery of the flaw in the building was based on a real situation. In 1978, engineering student Diane Hartley discovered a weakness if the Citicorp Center building in NYC was subjected to quartering winds. The original design called for some structural items to be welded, but they were bolted when the building was built. The building was repaired with welded sections at night, in secret, over several months.

Goofs
The splash screen shows numbers for the falling body of a suicide victim with a time to impact of 4 seconds and a speed of 15 MPH from a height of 150 feet. Those numbers are incorrect. A body accelerates at 32 feet per second per second, that means its speed increases by 32 feet per second each second it falls. In 4 seconds it will have reached a speed of 128 feet per second (32 x 4) which is 87 MPH and will have fallen 256 feet.

Quotes
Dr. Larry Fleinhardt: Well, it's evident Finn was obsessed with the design and construction of the Cole Center building.
Charlie Eppes: There was some problem here that he was trying to solve, that he needed my help with. So we must infer that it involves math. Oh... if I'd given him five minutes...
Dr. Larry Fleinhardt: Yeah, well, or ten... or a week. It might've made all the difference in the world, or none at all. You know Charlie, look at it this way... you've got Einstein, dead for decades... Descartes - centuries. A scholar's research continues to speak long after he's gone. And somewhere, in all this, Finn Montgomery's going to find a way to talk to you.