Re: HOH \"outdated\"
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But it would be pretty easy to explain to someone confused about it that (I think..I'm not a botanist) hardwood versus softwood is an issue of rigidity, not of strength.
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I don't agree. In any way an average person could measure, balsa, a hardwood, is softer, weaker and less rigid than pine, a softwood.
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A note on the side conversation that has developed here:
It seems even experts in the field would say that balsa is softer than most softwoods (and just about every hardwood). What makes it a hardwood is the type of tree it comes from, not its mechanical properties. It is known to be a very soft member of the hardwood family, at least according to Wikipedia.
From an engineer's perspective (I have a mechanical engineering background), hardness is a different property than strength and rigidity (typically referred to as elastic modulus or stiffness). The three are different and are measured differently. Anyone who has made a dent in a piece of balsa with just their fingernail (most closely aligned with a hardness test) knows that it is soft. This doesn't tell you much about it's tensile or compressive strength or its stiffness.
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