BOOK REPORT ON :

CHAPTER 8
SOFT MATERIALS AND
LIVING STRUCTURES
Written by J.E. Gordon, “Structures or why things don’t fall
down” provide an extraordinarily human look into the topic,
introducing architectural and structural theory.
However, not everything is based on a structural form and a lot
of the book describes things in nature and the human body,
things that we know about and understand, such as the
skeletal structure and how that can support our weight, blood
vessels and pressures in those as well as trees and how they
can withstand the force of wind. By using these natural and
relatable comparisons, our understanding of this theory can be
cemented and better learnt.
As well as explaining theory, there is a progression through
time with the examples given, stretching from Greek times to
the industrial revolution to the modern day. A big part of this
is learning from the mistakes made in the past and
understanding how things were made then and the change in
technology and material science.
In addition to diagrams, there are also photographic and
drawn plates in the centre of the book which act as good
references throughout the book and allow you to see what
Gordon is referring to.
When Nature invented Something called "life* she may have
looked around, a little anxiously, for a Useful Pot to put it in,
for life would not have prospered for long naked and
unconfined. At the time this planet presumably afforded rocks
and' sand, water and an atmosphere of sorts, but it must have
been rather short of suitable materials for containers. Hard
shells could be made from minerals, but the advantages of a
soft skin, particularly in the earlier stages of evolution, seem
to be overwhelming.

Physiologically, cell walls and other living membranes may

need to have a rather closely controlled permeability to certain
molecules but not to others. Mechanically, the function of
these membranes is often that of a rather flexible bag. They
generally need to be able to resist tension forces and to be
able to stretch very considerably without bursting or tearing.
Also in most cases skins and membranes have to be able to
recover their original lengths of their own accord when the
force which has been extending them is removed.* The strains
to which present-day living membranes can be extended
safely and repeatedly varies a good deal but may typically lie
between 50 and 100 per cent. The safe strain under working
conditions for ordinary engineering materials is generally less
than 0*1 per cent, and so we might say that biological tissues
need to work elastically at strains which are about a thousand
times higher than those which ordinary tech- nological solids
can put up with.
 The mechanical problem is often much complicated by the
association of muscle tissue and other active devices for
contraction, but we shall ignore this for the present.
Not only does this enormous increase in the range of strain
upset a number of the conventional engineer’s preconceived
ideas about elasticity and structures; it is also clear that strains
of this magnitude cannot be furnished by solids of the
crystalline or glassy type based on minerals or metals or other
hard substances. It is therefore tempting, at least to the
materials scientist, to sup- pose that living cells might have
begun as droplets enclosed by the forces of surface tension.
We must be quite clear, however, that it is very far from certain
that this is what actually happened; what really did occur may
have been something quite different - or at any rate
considerably more complicated. What is certain is that some
features of the elasticity of animal soft tissues resemble the
behaviour of liquid surfaces and thus may possibly derive from
them.
Surface tension
If we extend the surface of a liquid, so that it presents a larger
area than before, we shall have to increase the number of
molecules present at the surface. These extra molecules can
only come from within the interior of the liquid and they will
have to be dragged from the inside of the liquid to its surface
against the forces which tend to keep them in the interior,
which can be shown to be quite large. For this reason the
creation of a new surface requires energy, and the surface also
contains a tension which is a perfectly real force.* This is most
easily seen in a drop of water or mercury, where the tension in
the surface pulls the drop into a more or less spherical shape
against the force of gravity. When a drop hangs from the
mouth of a tap, the weight of the water in the drop is being
sustained by the tension in its surface. This phenomenon is
the subject of a simple school experiment where one measures
the surface tension of water and other liquids by counting the
drops and weighing them. Although the tension in a liquid
surface is just as real as the tension in a piece of string, or any
other solid, it differs from an elastic or Hookean tension in at
least three important respects: The theory of surface tension
was originally worked out, independently by Young and by
Laplace, about 1805.
The behaviour of real soft tissues :
• no present-day cell wall operates simply by a
straightforward
Surface tension mechanism; but many of them do behave in a
way
Which is mechanically rather similar. One of the difficulties
about simple surface tension is that the tension force is
constant and cannot be increased by making the skin thicker;
this limits the size of any container made in this way.
• Nature is quite capable of producing a material which will
have the characteristics of surface tension * right through its
Thickness*, so to speak. A slightly embarrassing example may
be familiar to many people; when the dentist tells one to spit
into his basin the resulting string or cord of saliva sometimes
appears to be infinitely extensible and virtually un breakable.
The basic principle involved is that a material or membrane of
This sort is essentially a constant-stress device - that is to say,
it
Has only one stress to offer, and that one stress will operate in
All directions. The only shape of shell or vessel or pressure
Container which is compatible with this condition is either a
Sphere or else a part of a sphere. This can be seen pretty
clearly
With soap-suds and in the froth on beer. If one should want to
Make an elongated animal from membranes of this sort, then
the Best thing to do seems to be to make it of a ‘segmented*
Construction.
• The material will also be contracted sideways (i.E. At right
Angles to j x ) by some other strain which we may call e z .
Poisson found that, for any given material, the ratio of e 2 to e
x
Is constant, and this ratio is what we now call ‘poisson’s ratio'.
We shall use the symbol q in this book. Thus, for a given
material Subject to asimple uniaxial tension stress.

The strain in the direction of s u is often called the ‘primary

Strain’ ; the strain caused by $1 at right angles to itself, so to
Speak, is called the ‘secondary strain’
• We have said, the effect of poisson’s ratio is that, if we pull
upon a piece of material, such as a membrane or an artery
wall, in oneDirection it will get longer in that direction, but it
will
Contract, or get shorter, in the direction at right angles. So if
Two tensions are applied, at right angles to each other, the
Effects will be additive and the strains will be less than we
Should expect if either of the stresses were applied separately.
• The effects of poisson’s ratio are probably of very great
importance
In animal tissues; but they are also significant in enrNeering
and the matter is continually cropping up in all sorts of
Connections.