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. 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 (also a pun on shear strength).

Transcript

[A banner flutters in the breeze, evidently attached to the elevator it mentions in its text. It reads "SPACE ELEVATOR" "GRAND OPENING".]

[A space elevator occupies the height of the frame, consisting of a base, a ribbon extending out into space, and an elevator unit with standard elevator features such as sliding doors and up/down buttons.]

[The following lines appear split across the elevator itself, the rhyming portions of the text separated from the others.]

          After countless    engineers
     Spend trillions over    fifty years,
           A modern babel    disappears
Because some fuck brought    pruning shears

[Five individuals stand at the base of the elevator: Megan, Cueball, Ponytail who has recently opened a bottle of champagne, an alarmed man, and Black Hat, who has smuggled the aforementioned shears into the ceremony and unceremoniously turned it into a ribbon cutting.]

SNIP

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