Originally Posted by
dabac
If you want to go that route I believe the proper engineering term is strain, tension by unit of surface area.
As long as we're using engineering terms, we might as well use them properly. Strain is
elongation/area, the word for tension/area is
Stress, which is apropos of using smaller section spokes on the left rear. For the same tension (determined by the right side tension, and amount of dish) we have a greater relative loading on the spoke, ideally matching that on the right.