Spiderwebs are naturally occurring tensegrities. Photos by Margaret Wertheim, from Venezuela.
BiotensegriTea Party Series – #33 Math, Art and Biology.
Tensegrity structures were made famous by the sculptor Kenneth Snelson and the architect R. Buckminster Fuller, who used them in his geodesic domes and elsewhere. They have also been studied extensively by engineers and mathematicians, who have articulated formal properties of these unique strutted forms, which balance out forces of tension and compression. But long before humans cognized this elegant engineering technique, nature had been making use of tensegrities in a variety of living systems and animal-generated architectures. Spider webs are tensegrities, and cells are held together by filigreed nets of tensegrity built from stranded proteins.
The organization Biotensegrity.com is devoted to exploring realizations of tensegrities in nature. On November 6, 2020, IFF director Margaret Wertheim will participate in a panel discussion on these forms and on nature’s proclivity for inventing clever mathematical solutions to complex real-world problems. The event is part of the group’s BiotensegriTea Party Series.
Date+Time: November 6, 2020, 10am – Zoom.
Panel participants: Margaret Wertheim and Daina Taimina, moderated by Chris Clancy.
Background Reading: See Margaret”s interview with mathematician Robert Connelly on the mathematics of tensegrity structures, from Cabinet magazine.
Mathematical diagrams of tensegrity structures, courtesy of Robert Connolly, Cornell University.
