August 10, 2007: Stuck hummingbird

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by SeanAhern

True. But with a spider web, any force on it is going to turn into a tensile force pretty much immediately. To shear a spider web strand, you'd have to have some way to keep the strand pointed one direction while applying force in another. Since the strand is, for all intents and purposes, a 1-dimensional object, it's going to be pulled parallel to your force vector immediately and your force will become purely tensile.

Yes, but we weren't talking about the pictures. Sarasvati48 was questioning my statement;

I'd guess that if the Hummer was outside it would easily fly through a web. But hovering up against the skylight, with no momentum, it just got more tangled and more tired.