101–110 of 180 posts
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Doesn't having a cutting board as hard as stone defeat the purpose of having a cutting board?
The purpose of a cutting board is to protect the things underneath it that are not as hard as stone.
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How can wood have better fire resistance than steel? I mean wood burns . /s
Correction: the outside of wood burns. But a wooden beam is going to slowly degrade over time during a fire, a steel beam will be fine right up to the point where it reaches a critical temperature and then it will collapse instantly. Wood degrades more gracefully giving occupants of a structure a few crucial minutes more to leave if the building is on fire.
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Concrete does provide some form of insulation as it has a fairly low rate of heat transfer. At the end of the day it'll still heat up though, and it's that heating up which weakens the steel, direct contact is not a requirement (there are specific methods like insulated concrete form which have higher fire resistance).
I have a technique I'd use to add heat resistance to steel. Only necessary If we lived in a doomed world where engineers didn't exist and I was asked to make steel more heat resistant. Cover steel beams in a relatively thick later of plaster of paris mixed with very find grain sand. I built a charcoal forge out of that material (I used quartz sand I got from a pool supply store) and it's ludicrously heat resistant. I…
The most expensive wooden floors have the end grain exposed facing upwards and this is then compressed down, much like the top of a good quality butchers block. Those floors are just about indestructible. The heavier such floors are used the stronger they get! The wood in the article is compressed crosswise to the grain (so they get thinner rather than shorter), using the original planks as the raw organic material t…
Do you mind sharing a picture of this done right? The end grain wood floor pics I found on Google look mostly hideous to me.
Each block is 6"x6" (15cm x 15cm) of pine. Apparently it lasts a long time, but took a long time to install.
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It's a reference to [The Worf Effect][1]. [1]: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWorfEffect
Exactly. Just to amuse myself, I spent a few minutes googling for materials that are "stronger than steel." spider silk (a classic): https://www.npr.org/2017/01/14/509807212/spider-silk-is-stro... bone: http://ipfactly.com/human-bone-is-stronger-than-steel/ a graphene sponge: https://www.materialstoday.com/mechanical-properties/news/sp... carbon nanotubes: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/presspacs/2010/.…
Define "stronger"
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It's still wood, and wood is only barely biodegradable. If you take decent care of it it'll last for centuries.
A fallen tree in damp conditions rots down in a year or so. Seems pretty biodegradable. Your second sentence I have no problem with.
People may also find Pykrete interesting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete Its adding wood pulp to ice to make the ice much much tougher. It was invented by the epitome boffin Geoffrey Pyke, who proposed they build an aircraft carrier of it! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk
Speaking of which, he's first cousin to Magnus Pyke - the guy usually remembered in the US (if at all) as the Professor shouting "science!" in Thomas Dolby's "she blinded me with science;" both on the song and in the video. In the UK he was, like his cousin Geoffrey, much better known for being the quintessential boffin, though Magnus self consciously played up this stereotype in his long television career. Sort of like Bill Nye on the outside but Carl Sagan on the inside.
The most expensive wooden floors have the end grain exposed facing upwards and this is then compressed down, much like the top of a good quality butchers block. Those floors are just about indestructible. The heavier such floors are used the stronger they get! The wood in the article is compressed crosswise to the grain (so they get thinner rather than shorter), using the original planks as the raw organic material t…
none of those ever made it to very high levels of industrial adoption. Non-exotic methods of strengthening wood, made it to high levels of production in spades: plywood, oriented strand board, microlam and glulam beams, and medium density fiber board (MDF) are direct examples. Wood I-joists and plate connected wood trusses are less direct. From a functional standpoint, standardization of lumber grades is a social tec…