¶ Gravity: Circumferential Leverage (1)
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Index Entry
"The principle of leverage is employed in shears, nutcrackers, and pliers. The longer the lever arms, the more powerful the pressure applied between the internal central angles of the nutcracker’s lever arms. We can make an illuminating model of our planet Earth if we think of it as a spherical bundle of nutcrackers with all their fulcrums at the center of the sphere and all the radii of the sphere acting as the lever arms of the pincers. The whole bunch of pincers have a common universal fulcrum at the common center. The farther out we go on the radial lever arms, the less effort is required to squeeze the ends together to exert nutcracking pressure at the center. If we go around the sphere-embracing circumference progressively tying up the ends of the levers together, we find that it takes very little, local, surface effort tensively between any two surface points to build up excruciatingly powerful, central-compression conditions. The bigger the model, the easier it is to tie it up; ever more delicate an exterior web will hold it together.
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