Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down

by J.E. Gordon

pterodactyls

arteries

The power of any Spring is in the same proportion with the Tension* thereof: That is, if one power stretch or bend it one space, two will bend it two, three will bend it three, and so forward. And this is the Rule or Law of Nature, upon which all manner of Restituent or Springing motion doth proceed.

when any structure deflects under load in the way we have been talking about, the material from which it is made is itself also stretched or contracted, internally, throughout all its parts and in due proportion, down to a very fine scale – as we know nowadays, down to a molecular scale.

In short, Newton was well constituted to detest Hooke as a man and to loathe everything he stood for, down to and including elasticity. It so happened that Newton had the good fortune to live on for twenty-five