697: Tensile vs. Shear Strength

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Tensile vs. Shear Strength

Title text: Although really, the damage was done when the party planners took the hole punch to the elevator ribbon to hang up the sign.

Explanation

Tensile strength represents how hard you can pull on something without it breaking. Shear strength represents how hard you can try to cut it without it breaking. Many materials have great tensile strength but low shear strength (such as dental floss — try to break it by just pulling on two ends), including whatever this space elevator is made of. The material clearly has extremely high tensile strength because it can hold the elevator in place, with one end on the ground and one in space, but it can be cut with a simple pair of pruning shears. This also highlights the fact that "shear strength" and "shears" are etymologically related.

A space elevator is a proposed construction that would make space travel easier. It consists of a long string attached to the Earth (near equator) on one end and a counterweight (beyond the geostationary orbit) on the other end, kept taut and in one place by the gravity and centrifugal forces. This would make it possible to carry spacecraft into the orbit by simple mechanical means, as opposed to requiring the use of rockets as is the case nowadays, saving a lot of energy and resources.

The phrase "a modern Babel" refers to the biblical story of the Tower of Babel (later referenced in 2421: Tower of Babel), in which humans endeavor to build a tower reaching heaven. Their arrogance angers God and prompts him to sabotage the project. A space elevator can be seen as a modern equivalent of a tower to heaven.^{[citation needed]} Additionally, the expression "a modern Babel" may be used figuratively to describe huge projects (especially buildings or human-made structures) that fail because they are too ambitious.

The title text makes the point that even before Black Hat cut the space elevator's ribbon-like cable in two, it was ruined by the holes in it for the banner. The holes would reduce the surface area of the cross section of the ribbon, reducing its ability to keep the elevator attached to the ground. The flag and holes would also potentially make it impossible for the elevator to travel up the ribbon, making the entire elevator useless.

Transcript

[A space elevator occupies the height of the frame, consisting of a base, a cable extending out into space, and an elevator unit with standard elevator features such as sliding doors and up/down buttons. A banner flutters in the breeze attached to the cable going up above the elevator. There is text on the banner. Text appear in four lines split across the elevator cable itself, the rhyming portions of the text is on the right side of the cable. Five individuals stand at the base of the elevator. To the left are Megan, a Cueball-like guy with his arms raised, and Ponytail, who is holding a bottle of champagne/sparkling wine which is bubbling out down the neck of the bottle. To the right is Black Hat, who cuts the cable with a pruning shear like it was part of the ceremony as a ribbon cutting. Finally further right is Cueball who sees what Black Hat is doing. He is very alarmed holding a hand to his mouth while holding the other out towards Black Hat.]

Banner: Space Elevator

Banner: Grand opening

After countless	engineers
spend trillions over	fifty years,
a modern babel	disappears
because some fuck brought	pruning shears.

Pruning shears: Snip

Cueball: !!

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Discussion

Does anyone know the tensile vs. shear strength of nanotubes? Djbrasier ([[User talk:Djbrasier|talk]]) 20:33, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

"but it can be cut with a simple pair of pruning shears (also a pun on shear strength)" - I don't know the precise etymology of the word shears, but I would assume they are called such precisely because they operate on a shearing principle. While it is fair to assume that the use of the words 'pruning shears' is intentional (rather than 'scissors' or similar) , I wouldn't call it a pun (exploiting multiple meanings of words). --Pudder (talk) 16:07, 11 September 2014 (UTC) (Retroactively signed)

I agree, it's not a pun. I'm going to change that. Spiral phi (talk) 19:32, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

I can't immediately think of any other rhyming comics. Are there any others? --Pudder (talk) 16:07, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

At least 206: Reno Rhymes, 491: Twitter and 805: Paradise City, and probably others. Pelosujamo (talk) 17:32, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Though the thing would have buckled before all this could even have a chance to happen 108.162.254.71 16:22, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Buckling is specifically a failure under compressive load. I'm assuming we are looking at a cable under tensile load caused by centrifugal force. (The old swinging a bucket on a rope trick). Wikipedia has an interesting Space Elevator article. --Pudder (talk) 12:23, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Aargh! The first line lacks a syllable... E.g. THEN after countless engineers...Mumiemonstret (talk) 10:31, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the 3rd line's been changed; when I first read it, it ended with either "turns to tears" or "ends in tears". Can anyone confirm? Promethean (talk) 19:03, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

More accurate to refer to punched holes in terms of being stress concentrators than in terms of cross-section reduction. Sharp corners can reduce stress to failure massively while only marginally reducing cross-sectional area 108.162.216.18 16:09, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

In reality, I believe that any space elevator would be nearly perfectly balanced, to the point that it would not even need to necessarily be connected to the ground. That is of course why a space elevator in and of itself is possible and why a material with great tensile strength is needed, as it would be perfectly balanced. 108.162.245.170 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Attaching to the ground provides stability to some designs. It does not need to be perfectly balanced as the moving cargo will be changing the center of mass anyway. SDSpivey (talk) 00:21, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure you guys missed the reference to Burma Shave. The setup of the text is identical to the "burma shave" campaign (4 rhyming lines + "Burma Shave"). In this case Pruning Shears is used instead of Burma Shave which sounds quite similar (this is why he choose that over "scissors" or similar). See comic 491 for another reference. 188.114.102.169 15:11, 24 August 2016 (UTC) msx80

The Burma Shave connection is weak. The signs used only three or four syllables per line and just one rhyme (e.g., "Ben met Anna / Made a hit / Neglected beard / Ben Anna split"), and the "Burma Shave" was on a fifth, separate sign, not part of the rhyme. Gmcgath (talk) 20:23, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

I find it cool there is a melody "Cerebral Plumbing" by Rom di Prisco, which fits the pattern of the poem. 141.101.104.201 07:21, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

It’s written in Common Meter (mostly) which means that it fits to quite a number of tunes (especially if one is prepared to force the syllables a bit). The second line is the main one to break a little from this but with a bit of effort it can be sang to O Little Town or Bethlehem or even the Original Pokemon Theme.