A US company has engineered a new type of wood that it says has up to 10 times the strength-to-weight ratio of steel
neat!
while also being up to six times lighter.
But… but that’s… that’s part of the thing. That you just said improved. The ‘weight’ part in ‘strength-to-weight’.
Yes, but they are different values.
I don’t understand the confusion. Isn’t lighter material an improvement?
Yes it is, but it’s already covered. I’m memeing on the the text.
It’s like saying “you need less fuel per mile/kilometer and you need less fuel”.
You can’t just say, “you need less fuel”, because it always depends on how much you actually drive and that kind of measure is already the “liters per kilometer”, so the second part of the sentence is just nonsense. Which makes me question if the person writing about it, understood any part of what they’re writing about.
Ah, I see. I couldn’t make sense of the other comments about density, but I get it now.
I think with your analogy, it would be more like you have a vehicle that needs less fuel per distance, but it also magically doesn’t need to travel as much distance to reach your destination.
The company’s own website lists “weight” as a separate row item in their performance comparison chart
https://www.inventwood.com/technology
I think it means 10 times strength-to-weight, and 6 times strength-to-volume size
If i had to guess then I’d guess they mean lighter by volume. Like if an i-beam made of steel weighs 6 tons, then the same size i-beam made using superwood would weigh 1 ton.
I.e. it’s 10 times better in strength-to-weight, and it’s 6 times better in strength-to-volume.
This is just my guess at interpreting what they tried to say
There’s a great video on YouTube by NileRed, basically they soak the wood in stuff to make the cellulose soft, then then compress the hell out of it with some heat evaporating the chemical and making smushy strong wood.
I can’t believe that I’m going to be the first to say this but…
My wood is already ten times stronger than steel!
I’ll see myself out.
Um… what exactly is this picture of a weight sitting on the ground under a bent piece of wood supposed to show us?
This picture was supposed to be embedded. Not sure what I did wrong.
https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/weight-test-2.JPG
Maybe it shows how much the wood bent compared to the other sample?
Yeah, but the weights are not suspended above the ground. They’re sitting on the ground. Why should I believe it won’t bend more or even break?
It really only shows that it didn’t fail (YET), like the other material did, you can see the other rod bent and one side slid off the platform. There are a lot of ways of measuring materials. This is a valid comparison between the two materials but isn’t intended to demonstrate that it can hold all of that weight without failing.
But the back one doesn’t look like its on the ground, only the front one.
This would be a dream if they can produce this with renewable energy and sequester a bunch of the carbon we’ve emitted. 90% smaller carbon footprint is already really great news
So what is the enviromental or personal health impact? It says it boils and adds chemicals to the wood. Does this make it treated wood? Are there limits to where you can use it?
Is it still Fire’s Favourite Food? Then Fuck no.