We live in a world obsessed by perfection. Everything is supposed to be better if it’s shiny, defect-free and stronger than a Sherman tank.
But be careful what you wish for, because a flawless world wouldn’t work nearly as well. Imperfections are tools, and we would be lost without them.
Of course, flaws are not always convenient.
Imagine bending a long thin object, like a bar of chocolate. If the chocolate has flat surfaces, each side is stretched evenly. It’s hard to break, but if you put a notch in it the section of chocolate just underneath also has to do the job of the bit you’ve taken out. The chocolate will break at the notch. It’s not because it’s thinner at that point but because the sharp point of the notch concentrates the force in a very small area.
In a flawless object the stress you put on a material by pushing, stretching, bending and twisting is relatively evenly spread. Features like notches, voids and tiny cracks make the pattern of stress more complicated, concentrating the stress in some bits and relieving it in others. If you could see stress as colours, every object you pushed on would suddenly light up with bands of colour and the flaws would be tiny pinpoints of dazzlingly bright light. Those pinpoints are vulnerable, overloaded already, they can’t take much more.
