¶ Trees
Index Entry
Trees:
"Whereas man builds all of his buildings with compressional strategies and all engineering analysis is in terms of compressional continuity of the old stone-on-stone, nature doesn’t do any of her compression work with crystallines or solids. She uses them only in tension because the crystalline has the most bonding, therefore the best in tension…
"Nature does all of her compression just as in a tree. You take a beautiful but fairly small tree-- with its branches out-- and its wing root would be just about the same size as your shoulder. You will find that whereas you can only hold possibly 30 to 40 pounds out horizontally, this tree is holding out a thousand pounds. And we get to a big tree with many tons out there, holding this thing out with all the great winds and the hurricanes: How can it do such an extraordinary task?
“It goes back to the tetrahedron, the simplest structural system in Universe. Where you associate tetrahedra just corner-to-corner there is a mass interattraction occurring, but they are free to move as in a universal joint. Tetrahedra fastened corner-to-corner would fill a whole lot of space, but with enormous spaces in between them. Because there is so much”
