Device for Fragile Objects

The present invention consist of a spring transporting device for fragile objects, delicate instruments and the like; and it consist of the details of construction hereinafter set forth, and particularly pointed out in the claims.

This patent is relevant to our two concepts because this invention allows to move fragile objects in a safe way, the robust structure protects them so they won't break. 

Impact Testing Machine

The invention relates ti impact-testing mechanism and more especially to a novel and useful mechanism for performing both Izod and charpy impact tests. The invention consist in the novel parts, contructions, arrangements, combinations and improvements. 

The invention is directed to providing a mechanism for preforming several types of impact test where in the  resistance of a specimen to breakng under sudden impact is measured by the terminal travel of a pendulum hammer after the breakage of the specimen. 

This is yet another example of  an impact test that test the resistance of a material and sees how fragile or robust it is.  

Steam-Welding Process

This invention relates to the art of seam welding. One of the objects of this invention is to provide a process of uniting metal artiles or fabrications or portions thereof, by seam welding, whereby a weld is formed of greatly superior propieties as compared with welds ontain by previous seam welding process. This type of welding increases the strength of the weld and decreases the internal stress. 

This patent reflects both of our concepts, Robust and Fragile, because the steam wealding process is something that gives strength to a structure that was previously weak.  By welding together two fragile pieces these two unite to make a robust form. 

Notched-Bar-Testing Machine

This invention relates to testing machines for use in testing notched bars such as are usually broken in machines of the Izod or Charpy type and the invention consist in an improved construction of machine which is capable of producing upon a chart during a  test a continuous auto-graphic curve expressing the relation at any moment between the bending moment applied to the test piece or specimen and the angular distortion which the bending moment produces in it ; and further my improved machine is provided with apparatus for directly and visually indicating on a gradual dial, the energy expended in bending or breaking the test piece.

Here we can observe another patent design for testing the energy expended in bending or breaking the test piece. This test practically defines how fragile or robust a piece is. 

Introduzione al nostro Blog - In Italiano

Il nostro blog presenta i concetti rappresentati dal binomio Robusto e Fragile. Negli ultimi mesi abbiamo analizzato l'impatto che questi hanno sulla nostra cultura materiale. Abbiamo investigato attraverso diversi ambiti dell'arte come della letteratura, cinema, pittura, musica e architettura. Oltre alle diverse arti abbiamo anche considerato altre discipline quali la filosofia, la scienza e la storia, e ancora molte altre. Abbiamo inoltre esaminato e rappresentato gli esempi che la nostra cultura contemporanea riflette nella pubblicità, design, cartoni e fumetti. Leggendo il nostro blog si potranno scoprire tutti questi esempi che abbiamo trovato e come questo binomio interagisca tra di lo

Introduccion al Blog - En Español

Nuestro blog se basa en dos conceptos opuestos que son Robusto y Frágil. En los últimos meses hemos analizado el impacto que ambos conceptos  han tenido en nuestra cultura material. Hemos investigado sus aplicaciones en diferentes áreas del arte como en la literatura, el cine, la pintura, la música y la arquitectura. Además de las artes también hemos considerado otras disciplinas como la filosofía, la ciencia y la historia entre otras. Inclusive hemos examinado ejemplos de nuestra cultura contemporánea reflejados a través de el diseño, la publicidad, los dibujos animados y las tiras cómicas. Al leer nuestro blog podrá descubrir todos los ejemplos que hemos encontrado donde ambos de nuestros conceptos intervienen.

Introduction to our Blog - In English

Our blog is based on two opposite concepts that are Robust and Fragile. Throughout the past months we have analyzed the impact both concepts have had on our material culture. We have investigated its application in different fields of the arts such as literature, cinema, painting, music and architecture. Besides the arts we have also considered other disciplines such as philosophy, science and history among others.  We even examined examples of our contemporary culture reflected in advertisements, design, cartoons and comic strips. By reading at our blog you will discover all the examples we have found where our two concepts interfere.

Guiding Light_Muse

Pure hearts stumble
in my hands, they crumble
Fragile and stripped to the core
I can't hurt you anymore
Loved by numbers
you're losing life's wonder
touch like strangers; detached
I can't feel you anymore
The sunshine trapped in our hearts
it could rise again
but i'm lost, crushed, cold and confused with no guiding light left inside

you were my guiding light

When comfort and warmth can't be found I still reach for you
but i'm lost, crushed, cold and confused with no guiding light left inside

You're my guiding light
You're my guiding light
when there's no guiding light left inside
when there's no guiding light in our lives

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGLtufyEMFU&feature=fvw

Conceptual Map

Fragile and The Robust

Beauty and the Beast is a 1991 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation, released to theaters on November 22, 1991 by Walt Disney Pictures. The story is based on the fairy tale La Belle et la Bête by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, who was uncredited in the English version of the film but credited in the French version as writer of the novel. The movie also uses some ideas derived from the 1946 French film. It centers around a prince who is transformed into a Beast and the beautiful young woman whom he imprisons in his castle.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty_and_the_Beast_(1991_film)

Beauty and the Beast is the perfect couple to represent our concepts because the Beast represents the robustness and Bella represents the fragility. The Beast is a wolf-like creature that is very strong and is very angry. bella instead is a petit girl that is very beautiful sweet and delicate. 

J. Frazer, The Golden Bough

(Fragile, p.301a)

It would be idle, perhaps, to lay much weight on evidence drawn from the calendar of flowers, and in particular to press an argument so fragile as the bloom of the rose.

(Robust, p.499a)

These leaves were then distributed to everybody, old and young. When all was ready, a band of robust men, attended by a guard of exorcists, carried one of the cars down to the sea on the right side of the village graveyard, and set it floating in the water.

The Back Swan: on Robustness and Fragility

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a Lebanese philosophical essayist, scholar and practitioner of mathematical financial economics. He is best known as the author of the 2007 book (completed 2010) The Black Swan. Taleb has been critical of the finance industry and has been credited with making warnings regarding financial crises and making a fortune out of the 2008 crisis. Taleb is an activist and a promoter of what he calls a "Black Swan robust" society as well as aggressive "stochastic tinkering" as a means of scientific discovery.

Three years after the pubication of The Black Swan, Nassin Nicholas Taleb write the new book, where he studies the 2008 crisis, and about the economists should analize and take care of it, with annotations that have the taste of the irony and the skepticism.

Robustness and fragility summerize three years old life of a strong idea, that it’s able to change and modify our mental paradigms. From these meetings it was born "Robustness and Fragility", his new philosophical story where, furnishing us a topographical paper of the Estremistan, Taleb it teaches us whether to move us in a world dominated by the case and by the uncertainty.

Australia's Hot Air Balloon

Australia Post has recently issued a series of 4 postage stamps depicting hot-air ballooning. Released on May 6, 2008, the stamps celebrate the 150th anniversary of the first successful balloon flight in Australia. One-hundred fifty years ago, no one could have imagined that stamps would someday fly across the world attached to letters and carried on jet airplanes.

Source: http://www.stampsofdistinction.com/2008_05_01_archive.html

We belive that the image of the hot air balloon in this series of post stamps is very representavive of our concepts because we see the balloon as this huge object that at the same time is very delicate because what makes fly is only air and a thin fabric that can be easily damaged. 

The earth is the most fragile thing of all...

This stamp was created bye the U.S Postage for Earth Day with the slogan "The earth is the most fragile thing of all..." It's purpose was to create awareness to the public of the fragility of the planet. We find it representative for our blog because it shows how people think earth is so big and robust that it cannot be hurt by us, but the reality of the situation is that everyday we are damaging the earth and its becoming more and more fragile.

The Twin Towers, the crumbling of America

The World Trade Center (WTC) was a complex of seven buildings in Lower Manhattan in New York City that were destroyed in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The site is currently being rebuilt with six new skyscrapers and a memorial to the casualties of the attacks.

The original World Trade Center was designed by Minoru Yamasaki in the early 1960s using a tube-frame structural designPort Authority of New York and New Jersey agreed to take over the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad which became the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH).

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda-affiliated hijackers flew two 767 jets into the complex, one into each tower, in a coordinated terrorist attack. After burning for 56 minutes, the South Tower (2) collapsed, followed a half-hour later by the North Tower (1), with the attacks on the World Trade Center resulting in 2,752 deaths. The World Trade Center collapsed later in the day and the other buildings, although they did not collapse, had to be demolished because they were damaged beyond repair. The process of cleanup and recovery at the World Trade Center site took eight months. 

The fall of the Twin Towers has represented for all the Western Hemisphere the collapse of the economic power of the United States.

The terrorist attack had two consequences, the first on a symbolic level because the nation that was considered the strongest and “untouchable” was penetrated and attacked in their own soil, and the second one was the exposure of the fragility and vulnerability of this nation, attacked in its most important and world-known economic center.

Ron Mueck

While many artists strive to glamorize, and portray our world to be better than it actually is, others simply find art in our ordinary lives and our simple bodies. Mueck is one of those artists, and is now well known for his super realistic sculptures where he portrays humans at key stages in the life cycle, from birth through middle age, to death.

Ron Mueck, now working in the United Kingdom, was born in 1958 in Melbourne, Australia. The son of German-born toy-makers, he grew up making creatures, puppets and costumes in his spare time, experimenting with materials and techniques. He started his career as a model maker and puppeteer for children’s films (such as Labyrinth, The Storyteller and etc.). Later he was making photo-realistic props and animatronics for the advertising industry. In 1996 Mueck transitioned to fine art and in 1999 he was appointed as Associate Artist at the National Gallery, London.

Without further ado, let’s take a little virtual museum tour, and explore these mind-blowing photo realistic sculptures by  Ron Mueck.

Source: http://www.boredpanda.com/13-hyper-realistic-sculptures-by-ron-mueck/

We have chosen the work of Ron Mueck because with his sculptures of extraordinary proportions he portrays the fragility of human beings in the cycle of life. Although the statues are enormous the body language of these is read as weak and fragile. 

"It wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast."

King Kong is a 2005 remake of the 1933 film of the same name directed by Peter Jackson and stars Naomi Watts, Jack Black and Adrien Brody. Andy Serkis, through performance capture, portrayed Kong.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Kong_%282005_film%29

King Kong may be one of Hollywood's most emblematic characters. The story of the giant ape that falls in love with a beautiful woman, which cosequently leads him to his death. Once again we find another example of a character that seems robust and stong but in the end is defeated because of a weakness, in this case his weakness was the love he felt for the woman that will lead him to his downfall.

Cow and chicken.

Cow and Chicken is an American animated series, created by David Feiss. The series shows the surreal adventures of a cow, named Cow, and her chicken brother, named Chicken. They are often antagonized by "The Red Guy", who poses as various characters to scam or hurt them. 

Cow, is Chicken's 7 year old sister, with a weight stated as 600 pounds. Cow looks up to Chicken, who she refers to as "Big Brother". She is often viewed by Chicken as infantile and stupid, and is quickly prone to emotional outbursts. She is the only character to appear in every episode of the show. Cow has employed Blackmail to get Chicken to do what she wants and often attempts to get the other characters to do the right thing. Cow's alter ego is "Supercow", a superhero with the ability to fly. 

Chicken, is Cow's 11 year old brother. He can be mean to his younger sister, and even to the rest of the family. He has a powerful ego, but in spite of this, has a powerful conscience, usually only displayed when Cow is in danger. His speech is riddled with malapropisms and sarcasm. Despite being a male, he demonstrated the ability to lay eggs. Chicken is very fond of ice skating. Like other chickens, he cannot fly, and is afraid of flying. Chicken is the only character in the show who knows that his sister and Supercow are the same person. 

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_and_Chicken

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zXIScJ1LT8

Cow and Chicken are two characters that represent very well each one of our concepts. Cow is the personification of Robust, both physically and in personality. Chicken, instead, is the personification for Fragile. 

The Lion and the Mouse A lion lay asleep in the forest, his great head resting on his paws.  A timid little mouse came upon him unexpectedly, and in her fright and haste to get away, ran across the lion's nose.  Woken from his nap, the lion laid his huge paw angrily on the tiny creature to kill her. "Spare me!" begged the poor mouse. "Please let me go and some day I will surely repay you." The lion was so amused at the idea of the little mouse being able to help the King of Beasts, that he lifted up his paw and let her go.  Some weeks later, the lion was caught in a net.  The hunters who desired to carry the lion alive to their King tied him to a tree while they went in search of a wagon to carry him.

Just then the little mouse happened to pass by, and seeing the lion's sad plight, went up to him and soon gnawed away the ropes of the net, freeing the lion.

"You have helped me and now I have returned the favor.  Was I not right - even a mouse can help a lion!" said the little mouse.

Don't forget:  even the smallest friend is worthwhile!

 

http://www.dltk-teach.com/fables/lion/tale.htm

 

The Lion and the Mouse is an Aesop's fable. In the fable, a lion wants to eat a mouse who wakes him up. The mouse begs forgiveness and promises to return the favor if ever he is given the opportunity. He also makes the point that such unworthy prey as he should not stain the lion's great paws. The lion is moved to uncontrollable laughter and when he recovers, lets the mouse go, stating that he has not had such a good laugh in ages.
Later, the lion is captured by hunters and tied to a tree; the lion roars with all his might so that someone might help him. The mouse hears the lion's pleas and frees him by gnawing through the ropes. The moral of this story is stated in the last line of the fable:

Little friends may prove great friends.

"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted"
Another Aesop fable with a similar moral lesson concerns a slave who removes a thorn from a lion's paw, and the lion later comes to the slave's rescue.[1


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion_and_the_Mouse

Lion and the Mouse is the perfect couple to represent our concepts because they  represents the robustness and the fragility. The Lion is  the king of the jungle  that is very strong, big and is also very angry.  Mouse instead is a small, helpless that is very crafty sweet and delicate.  But then at the end everything changes, the robust turns into the fragile and the fragile into the robust.

Pepsi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40DykbPa4Lc

In this Advertisement we can see the story of a fragile boy that becomes a warrior. We can also see how robust objects seem fragile in the boy's hands.