Stress

Imagine, if you will, a brushed steel bar about 30 cm long and 6 cm by 6 cm thick square. You have it in your hands. It is heavy. You consider the bar, hefting it in your hands. You hold either end in both hands between thumb and fingers, as one would hold a sandwich.
Slowly, you attempt to bend the bar. You know it's impossible for you to bend the bar, but you do it anyway.

Now. You can see a "heat map" of where the stress is applied, where the iron and carbon atoms at the bend point at the top of the bar are struggling against ripping apart.

I like this definition of stress, that despite the fact that you can see no movement in the bar, there are still forces at work inside the metal, forces that will, given enough energy, tear the bar apart. I'm always fascinated by the thought that without any visual cues, something is falling apart. Like a glacier falling into the sea. Huge chunks of ice gradually, slowly, cracking and breaking apart, until one last, tiny piece of it finally breaks away from the main body and the whole berg collapses into the ocean.

I have been stressed lately. With regular things, I guess. Money is tight. Housemates are getting on my nerves. College work is plentiful. My bike's rear tire went flat during the day, somehow after I got to college, and won't pump back up, so I assume it's burst. How the fuck does that even happen. I have a presentation for my project work tomorrow, the format of which is bothering me: We have to stand beside posters we made up of our work while bigwigs from the national engineering conclave asks us questions about them. I mean, come on. Posters. What are we, 12?
I am in dire need of winding down, I need a good drunken house party with all my mates, I haven't slept properly in days.

I feel like I'm in a spiral and I need to find purchase on the sides and start climbing back up.