Re: Can this be true?

[Lois Breur Krause <krause@CLEMSON.EDU>]

It doesn't make sense. doesn't it have a specific tensile strength? this
would have to assume the string "knows" and "decides" where to break.
the old "consider the spherical egg" comes to mind.

i've had experience with perfect crystals. even in a perfect crystal, a
fracture will occur under stress. the *perfect* string, given sufficient
tension, would seemingly disintegrate instantaneously at the fracture
tension. or so it would possibly seem by calculation.

> If a piece of string were exactly the same all along, however thin it
> was, however great the weight hung on it, and however much you jerked
> it, it could not break--it wouldn't know where to break.
>        The Collected Works of Paul ValÈry
>        ValÈry, Paul
>        Volume 14
>        Analects (p. 322)
>
> --
> Carl C. Gaither
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

Dr. Lois Breur Krause
Department of Geological Sciences
442 Brackett Hall
Clemson University
Clemson SC  29634

teaching chemistry, physics, astronomy and geology to elementary education
majors.

How We Learn and Why We Don't: Student Survival Guide,
available from International Thompson Publishing, ISBN 0324-011970

http://home.earthlink.net/~breurkrause

krause@clemson.edu