Cobre em Buckminster-Fuller (1997 [1975])

In others words, we can take the same amount of copper and make a propeller with just two blades, with three smaller blades, or with four much smaller blades. That is, we can with the same amount of copper invest the whole in higher frequency and get smaller wavelength. This is the quantum in wave mechanics; it is a most powerful tool that men have used to explore the nucleus of the atom, always assuming that 100 percent of the behaviors must be accounted for. We are always dealing with 100 percent finite. Experiment after experiment has shown that if there was something like .000172 left over that you could not account for, you cannot just dismiss it as an error in accounting. There must be some little energy rascal in there that weighs .000172. They finally gave it a name, the “whatson.” And then eventually they set about some way to trap it in order to observe it. It is dealing with the whole that makes it possible to discover the parts. That is the whole strategy of nuclear physics. (Buckminster-Fuller 1997 [1975]:67)

452.03 If we stretch an initially flat rubber sheet around a sphere, the outer spherical surface is stretched further than the inside spherical surface of the same rubber sheet simply because circumference increases with radial increase, and the more tensed side of the sheet has its atoms pulled into closerradial proximity to one another. Electromagnetic energy follows the most highly tensioned, ergo the most atomically dense, metallic element regions, wherefore it always follows great-circle patterns on the convex surface of metallic spheres. Large copper shelled spheres called Van De Graaff electrostatic generators are employed as electrical charge accumulators. As much as two million volts may be accumulated on one sphere’s surface, ultimately to be discharged in a lightninglike leap- across to a near neighbor copper sphere. While a small fraction of this voltage might electrocute humans, people may walk around inside such high-voltage-charged spheres with impunity because the electric energy will never follow the concave surface paths but only the outer convex great-circle paths for, by kinetic inherency, they will always follow the great-circle paths of greatest radius. (Buckminster-Fuller 1997 [1975]:325)

1052.85 What had been a linear requirement becomes a surface requirement for the elastic membrane. Surfaces of omni symmetrical geometrical objects are always second powers of the object’s linear dimensions. If we were to remove one of the spheres from the omniclingingly embracing sheath, the elastic membrane would snap-contract to enclose only the remaining sphere, but the rate of atomic population gain of the spherical, surface- clinging membrane derived from the previous intersphere linear tendon is of the second power of the arithmetical rate of linear contraction of the elastic tendon. Soon the thickness of the membrane on each sphere would multiply into a plurality of closest- packed atomic layers, and the volume of the atoms will thus increase at a third-power rate in respect to an arithmetical rate of distance-halving between any two spheres. This two-sphere embracing, few-atoms-thick, clinging elastic membrane fed into, or spread out from, an intersphere tension may be thought of as an electromagnetic membrane acting just like electric charges fed onto the convex surface of a copper Van de Graaff sphere or a copper wire (electric charges always inhabiting only the convex surfaces). (Buckminster-Fuller 1997 [1975]:1344)

BUCKMINSTER-FULLER, Richard. 1997 [1975]. Synergetics: exploration in the geometry of thinking. New York: Macmillan Publishing/Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller.