¶ Trees (B)
Index Entry
"We see a great tree with its beautiful limbs going out horizontally and the wing root is really pretty small. You weigh one of those branches, sometimes they go up to five tons. You find you have trouble holding 50 pounds out like that. Just try holding five tons out like that. You’ve got quite some structure all in a relatively small amount of space. And nature does that. And when a great storm comes along she is able to sway and yield and not break. If you have a great ice storm then off comes a branch. Nature then sends that crystalline seed and the crystal increases, making more and more of the fibers. And they are triple-bonded; therefore, they have a high tensile strength. And the crystals give all the tensile strength and it encases the hydraulic. The hydraulics have flexibility; they distribute the load so beautifully. But they are noncompressible. Between the molecules of the liquids are molecules of gases; and they are compressible and they take the shock load. So the great branch holding out its load does not deform, due to hydraulics being noncompressible. It’s distributing its load superbly. And it’s held together in the most high tensity we have-- which is the triple-bonding of the crystals. And then when the wind blows and the gas molecules in there yield to allow it to do this, despite the noncompressibility of the liquid. So the
¶ Citations
- Univ. of Alaska Address, pp.26-27, 20 Apr '72
