937.30 Octahedron as Sphere of Compression

937.31 The slenderness ratio in gravitationally tensed functioning has no minimum overall limit of its structural-system length, as compared to the diameter of the system’s midlength cross section; ergo,

\frac{tensile length}{diameter}= \frac{\alpha}{0}

In crystalline compression structures the column length minimum limit ratio is 40:1. There may be a length/diameter compression-system-limit in hydraulics, but we do not as yet know what it is. The far more slender column/diameter ratio attainable with hydraulics permits the growth of a palm tree to approach the column/diameter ratio of steel columns. We recognize the spherethe ball bearing, the spherical island\frac{column}{diameter}= \frac{1}{1} constituting the optimal, crystailine, compressive-continuity, structural-system model. (See Fig. 641.01.) The octahedron may be considered to be the optimum crystalline structural representation of the spherical islands of compression because it is double-bonded and its vectors are doubled.