Tension save us all

This past week was one heck of a week. The Cheryl Hayashi lecture on Thursday got me started thinking about the tension. The wide medley of spider silks that exist have high durability (because its near impossible to break up silk strands) and able to pick up lots of tension. As I was sitting through the lecture and quite a bit after wards I started seeing how high tension material is need in this world. She explained how silk could be used for bullet proof vests to tennis rackets. But the best place I learned from her lecture was the amazingness of tension. At Lyon Arboretum on Saturday, yes 3 days thinking about same principle, we had to do extreme weeding.

AS you can see from how much stuff we need to pull out of the ground it was made even more fun by the sheer verticalness (not a word) of the cliff. As I pondered how to pull out the non-ferns, non-grass, and no-tea leaves, I realized that maybe nature already found a perfect combo of tension. Since it was found in spider silk, I prayed that roots had the same principle, so I climbed the mountain using natural fibers to pull me up. And it worked, although I fell down and slid 20 feet, and I was able to rest against a tree (that also had to be cut down)and ponder why physics was stuck in my head that long? Seriously Doc why? whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?

By the way this is what the cliff looked like and the ground about 20 fet behind me