¶ Trees
Index Entry
Trees:
"space they are so flexible and you can really fold the mass back into its own self. This is the way gases are: the simplest bond you could get. They are the least coherent this way and highly compressible because of the flexible joints and the way they could be folded back on themselves. The flexible joints illustrate pneumatics where all the loads are very evenly distributed.
"Then we come to the same tetrahedra, but with two bonds. They can be edge-bonded, or hinged. In engineering you call that hinging and the loads are still flexibly distributed. And if you put all the tetrahedra together edge-to-edge you suddenly find that you have what we call the octahedron-tetrahedron truss. The interstices between the tetrahedra will be octahedra and they are structural systems. They are eight triangles. And so they do not flex. They are noncompressible; and they are like the liquids, being hinge-jointed and the loads are distributed with all the characteristics of liquids.
“Then we get to three joints and suddenly we have the crystalline and there is no flexibility in here at all and so no loads are”
