In my early civil engineering studies, I learned that ropes can only absorb tension but not compression because they are basically an infinite chain of hinges.
I can’t quite remember anymore how arches work, all I know is they behave in the opposite of ropes.
In: 21
The shortest distance between two points is a line.
Imagine a totally flat beam supporting something heavy. It bows. The line has become a curve, so it is stretching in tension.
In an arch, you already have a curve but this time the force is pushing it from a curve into a line. This time the longer arch is being compressed into a shorter line.
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