¶ Trees (1)
Index Entry
Trees:
"Nature designs the most efficient (ergo beautiful) structures, for instance, great trees. Let us examine the structural effectiveness of nature’s tree design. Make an experiment. Take a suitcase in each hand, each weighing about 50 pounds. Try to hold them out horizontally at arm’s length. It’s easy for our arms to hang them vertically from our shoulders; but the more horizontal, the more difficult. It is almost impossible to hold 50 pounds out horizontally.
"Yet look at a tree’s shoulders where the branches are attached. Look at the branch of a tree with the same girth as that of your shoulder when your arm is extended and muscles flexed. Such a tree branch may weigh 500 pounds-- 10 times what you can hold out horizontally.
“‘Wing root’ is the aeronautical engineering term for ‘shoulder,’ for example, the wing root between the fuselage of an airplane’s airframe and the jet-pod-carrying aluminum wing structures, which wing roots contain the mainspar. These air transport wing roots accomplish almost incredible tasks with incredibly low weight ratios. However, holding five and more ton branches”
