792.00 Design

792.01 The word design is used in contradistinction to random happenstance. Design is intellectually deliberate. Design means that all the components of the composition are interconsiderately arranged. In a design the component behaviors, proclivities, and mathematical behaviors are interaccommodative. The family of generalized principles constitutes an eternal cosmic design whose interrelationships are expressible only in abstract mathematical terms.

792.02 Speaking in terms of generalized law, structure is always and only the consequence of a complex of six energy eventsthree dominantly tensive and three dominantly compressivewith each set interacting in complement to produce a self-regeneratively stabilized pattern.

792.03 Contrary to common opinion (even that of engineers), structures are always dynamic and never static. All structural realizations are special case. Structural realizations have specific longevities; they are entropic; they give off energy. The energies are often syntropically replaceable in the consequence of structural transformations.

792.04 Any and all of what humans identify as substances are structural systems. Any and all structure consists entirely of atoms. Atoms are not things: they are energy events occurring in pure principle. Each and every experimentally evidenced atom is a complex of unique structural-system interrelationshipsboth internal and externalthat manifest generalized pattern integrities in special case scenario continuities.

792.10 Universe: Universe is synergetic. Universe is synergetically consequent to all the generalized principles, known or unknown. Universe is not a structure. Universe embraces all structures and more. While a plurality of generalizations governs all structures, realized structuring is always special case. Structures are synergetic consequences of the intimate interaction of a complex of special case factors. Superficially, the overall limits of the manifold omniintertransformability of structures are unitarily conceptual.

792.20 Scenario Universe: Scenario Universe embraces all the nonsimultaneous, only-local-in-time-and-place structurings, destructurings, unstructurings, and restructurings. All the somethingnesses are structures. All the nothingness is unstructure. All the somethingnesses are special case. All the nothingness is generalized.

792.30 Tension and Compression: Everything we call structure is synergetic and exists only as a consequence of interactions between divergent compressional forces and convergent tension forces.

792.31 I take a piece of rope and tense it. As I purposely tense it, I inadvertently make it more taut. But I was not tensing the rope for the purpose of making it taut; my brain was only trying to elongate the rope. As I do so, however, the girth is inadvertently contracting and the rope is inadvertently getting harder. In getting harder the cross-section of the rope is contracting radially in a plane at 90 degrees to the axis of my purposeful tensing, thus inadvertently producing the always and only coexisting action-reaction-and- resultant complementations of myopic preoccupation.

792.32 Next I purposely produce compression. I take tempered steel rods, each three feet long and one-eighth of an inch in diameter. The rods bend flexively. We find that two rods cannot get closer to one another than in parallel tangency of their circular cross-sections. A third rod cannot get closer to the other two than by nestling in the parallel valley between them. With each of the three rods in parallel tangency, the centers of their three circular crosssections form an equilateral triangle.

792.33 Hexagons consist of six equiangular triangles. Hexagons have six circumferential points and a center pointseven in allall equidistant from their neighbors. Six rods now huddle in closest-packed tangency around the original rod. (See Fig. 412.01.) And 12 more rods may be huddled around the first seven to complete an additional hexagonal perimeter. Successive perimeters aggregate, each time with six more rods than those of the previous ring. The outermost rods will be tangentially closest packed in triangular stabilization with their neighbors; the rod at the center is at the symmetrical nucleus of the aggregate. We note in nature that the rod-like Earthward trajectories of closely falling, inter-mass-attracted raindrops passing through freezing temperatures nucleate in hexagonal snowflake arrays under just such hexagonal close-packing laws.

792.34 The Greek architects found experientially that when the height of a stone column exceeded its girth by 18 diameters, it tended to fail by buckling out of the central stone cylinder section. The length-to-diameter ratio of a compressional column is called its slenderness ratio. Continuous steel columns are more stable than stone columns and may be used structurally with slenderness ratios as high as 30 to 1these are long columns. Short columnswith a slenderness ratio of 12 to 1tend to fail by crushing rather than by buckling.

792.35 For our further experiment in purposeful compression we assemble a column 36 inches high with a minimum girth diameter of three inches. It requires 547 of our 36-inch-long, one-eighth-inch-diameter rods to produce this 12-to-1 short column. Each individual rod is slender and highly buckle-able, but bound circumferentially together for its full length by tightly wound steel wire. The rods will close-pack symmetrically in a hexagonal set of 13 concentric rings around a nuclear rod: the maximum diameter will be three and three-eighths inches. We can then add forged steel caps over the hexagonal ends of this integrated short column.

792.36 We may next insert the column perpendicularly between the upper and lower jaws of a hydraulic press and load the composite column in vertical compression. We know from our earlier trial that each rod taken by itself can bend when end-loaded. Being close-packed together, they cannot bend further inwardly toward the center rod: they can only bend outwardly, straining the binding wire wrapped around the rods and causing them ultimately to yield to the severe outward force at the column’s mid-girth. The bunched ends are held together by the hexagonal steel caps as the force of the hydraulic press increases. This results in the whole column twisting mildly and bulging out to become cigar-shaped as seen in vertical profile. If loaded sufficiently, the bundle approaches sphericity.

792.37 This experiment indicates that our purposeful loading of the column in compression inadvertently results in its girth increasing in diameter, which brings about tension in the horizontally bound wires. An inadvertent tension occurs in a plane at 90 degrees to the axis of compression.

792.40 Tidal Complementarities: By two visibly different experiments one with rope and the other with steel rodswe have demonstrated experimentally that tension and compression always and only coexist. One can be at high tide of visibility and the other coincidentally at low tide, or vice versa. These tidal covariables are typical complementarities: they are not mirror images of one another, but must always balance one another complexedly in physical equations. Both demonstrate 90-degree inadvertent resultants. In engineering this behavior is known as the Poisson effect, and in physics it is known as precession.

792.50 Spherical Islands: Short columns loaded on their neutral axes tend to bulge toward sphericity of conformation. In the spherical formand only in the sphericalwe find that the system has no unique axis. Any diametric loading in the sphere is in effect a neutral axis. In coping with compressive loads, spheres act most effectively regardless of which is the loaded axis. Since spheres have the greatest volume with the least surface, loads are evenly distributed radially from the center to all of the enclosing mass. Thus ball bearings constitute the most effective of universal load-bearing designs for compressional functioning.

792.51 We find nature preferentially investing her compressionally assigned energy tasks in sphericalswhether stars, planets, asteroids, oranges, or atoms. Universe isolates all her major compression functions in spherical islands that are vastly remote from one another and that are intercohered only by Kepler’s and Newton’s invisible tension: gravity. The star Sun gravitationally precesses its compressionally islanded planets to orbit around it; the atomic nucleus gravitationally precesses its islanded electrons to orbit around it. Nature’s cosmic structuring strategy employs only discontinuous islanded compression and only omni-everywhere continuous tension, gravity. Paradoxically, Earthian engineers as yet design their structures only as compressional continuities, sometimes tied together by tension rods and reinforcements. Humans still use a primarily direct-compressional Stone Age logic, using tension only as a secondary reinforcement. Natureboth macrocosmically and microcosmicallyuses a primary tensional logic, with compression as a secondary islanded back-up.

792.52 The Stone Age logic said that the wider and heavier the walls, the more happily secure would be the inhabitants. The advent of metal alloys in the 20th century has brought an abrupt change from the advantage of structural ponderousness to the advantage of structural lightness. This is at the heart of all ephemeralization: that is the dymaxion principle of doing ever more with ever less weight, time, and ergs per each given level of functional performance. With an average recycling rate for all metals of 22 years, and with comparable design improvements in performance per pound, ephemeralization means that ever more people are being served at ever higher standards with the same old materials.