What do laterally loaded piles:

Pile loading test

and a safety device for walking on icy pavements:

have in common?

Apart from their obvious utility, both are the subject of learned papers, freely available at the Virginia Tech Digital Library and Archives, along with 18,762 Electronic Theses and Dissertations.

For the full papers see:

Investigation of the Resistance of Pile Caps to Lateral Loading and

Introducing Engineering Design Through an Intelligent Rube Goldberg Implementation

or search the entire archive at: Virginia Tech Digital Library and Archives