Re: Can this be true?

["JACK L. URETSKY (C)1998; HEP DIVISION, ARGONNE NATIONAL LAB ARGONNE, IL 60439" <JLU@HEP.ANL.GOV>]

Hi all-
        Lois Breur Krause writes:
It doesn't make sense. doesn't it have a specific tensile strength? t=
his
would have to assume the string "knows" and "decides" where to break.
the old "consider the spherical egg" comes to mind.

i've had experience with perfect crystals. even in a perfect crystal,=
 a
fracture will occur under stress. the *perfect* string, given suffici=
ent
tension, would seemingly disintegrate instantaneously at the fracture
tension. or so it would possibly seem by calculation.

> If a piece of string were exactly the same all along, however thin i=
t
> was, however great the weight hung on it, and however much you jerke=
d
> it, it could not break--it wouldn't know where to break.
>        The Collected Works of Paul Val=C8ry
>        Val=C8ry, Paul
>        Volume 14
>        Analects (p. 322)
*****************************************
        Au contraire.  Val is giving you a paradox; he invites you to
predict where his string "that is exactly the same all along" will break.
A nice thinkpiece, indeed.  You can use it to motivate a discussion on
critical thinking in a non-mathematical classroom setting.
                                Regards,
                                        Jack

        "I scored the next great triumph for science myself,
to wit, how the milk gets into the cow.  Both of us
had marveled over that mystery a long time.  We had
followed the cows around for years - that is, in the
daytime - but had never caught them drinking fluid of
that color."
                Mark Twain, Extract from Eve's
                Autobiography