Material Strength
These sponges skeletons have amazing geometric configurations, which have been extensively studied for their stiffness, yield strength, and minimal crack propagation. An aluminum tube (aluminum and glass have similar elastic modulus) of equal length, effective thickness, and radius, but homogeneously distributed, has 1/100th the stiffness.
Read more about this topic: Venus' Flower Basket
Famous quotes containing the words material and/or strength:
“We soon saw, as he saw, that he was not to be pardoned or rescued by men. That would have been to disarm him, to restore to him a material weapon, a Sharp’s rifle, when he had taken up the sword of the spirit,—the sword with which he has really won his greatest and most memorable victories. Now he has not laid aside the sword of the spirit, for he is pure spirit himself, and his sword is pure spirit also.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Few serve truth in truth because only few have the pure will to be just, and of those again very few have the strength to be just.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)