Talk:Specific modulus

Proposed move to Stiffness to weight ratio
Why is this article named with the least commonly used term for this property? Google returns 75,400 results for "specific modulus", 78,700 results for "specific stiffness", and 783,000 results for "stiffness to weight ratio".

I could understand this if Wikipedia were advocating the term "specific modulus", e.g. because it is shorter, or more technical sounding, or whatever. However my understanding was that Wikipedia was explicitly not in the advocacy business and that its articles should be named with the commonest term. In this case the commonest term occurs ten times as often as the other two terms.

This name has the further benefit of being self-explanatory, whereas those unfamiliar with either of the other two names would have to consult a dictionary when they encounter it in a text, which may well be why it is by far the commonest term.

I therefore propose moving this article to Stiffness to weight ratio and linking the other two terms to it. This won't compromise findability in any way, but the choice of name will indicate the most commonly used term. --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 17:54, 3 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Why has this not been done yet? I completely agree. Midnitecobra (talk) 07:52, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Minor typo in "Beam's cross-sectional area increases in two dimensions"?
Original: "Consider a beam whose cross-sectional area increases in two dimensions, e.g. a solid round beam or a solid square beam. By combining the area and density formulas, we can see that the radius of this beam will vary with approximately the inverse of the square of the density for a given mass.

By examining the formulas for area moment of inertia, we can see that the stiffness of this beam will vary approximately as the fourth power of the radius.

Thus the second moment of area will vary approximately as the inverse of the density squared, and performance of the beam will depend on Young's modulus divided by density squared. "

If we assume a cylinder, $$A=\pi\,r^2$$ and $$D=\frac{m}{V}=\frac{m}{A\,h}$$ thus $$r=\sqrt{g/(h*pi*D)}$$. Thus, the radius of this beam will vary with approximately the inverse of the square-root of the density for a given mass. Furthermore, this correction makes the following true: $$r^4 \propto \frac{1}{D^2} $$. Just my two cents, but not my area of expertise. Mouse7mouse9 00:54, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Six significant digits in the Young's modulus of wood?
What is the source of those Young's moduli of wood with ridicolous 6 significant digits? Even though it were possible to make such a precise measurement, wood is not such homogeneous to justify more than 2 significant digits.--Eio (talk) 07:46, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Agree. I don't care that the digits are given in the table, but it is plain silly to claim the are actually significant. Will go ahead and delete the words. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:480:91:FF00:0:0:0:15 (talk) 15:36, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Beyond that even the numbers in this table are not an accurate copy of the values from the linked source Gjxj (talk) 15:45, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

excessive wood table?
Is this lengthy table of values for various species of wood really appropriate to this article? Gjxj (talk) 15:40, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

elements too?
this is getting ridiculous. It is way beyond the scope of the article to be cataloging values for every conceivable substance. Gjxj (talk) 16:33, 24 August 2019 (UTC)