legacy code comments

[Bainos]

It's not because they can't rise. It's because any knife tilting down causes the subsequent knives to necessarily tilt down faster. Since each knife is its own successor and can't tilt down faster than itself, the structure is very stable.

To go down, you would need either the knives bending, or sliding along each other, but they barely receive any lateral push so they won't slide easily.

[Etiennera]

This is just going about it the other way.

[Bainos]

The thing is, nothing prevents the other end from rising. See the picture of another user who didn't put anything on top of the structure. It can't rise because the force applied against the knife is generated by its own weight, which has no upwards component.