5 November

If you’re not familiar with tensegrity structures, here are some examples. (These are interesting because it now seems most living things are structured in this way.) What makes them unique is that, unlike in other structures, none of the structural members bend; everything is axially loaded, in engineer’s speak. Because our bodies are tensegrities, this means we can change shape as a whole without imposing any localised bending forces anywhere in our bodies. Which is why we can be weightless, even here on the ground (weightlessness is the absence of unbalanced forces caused by contact forces, like the ground).