[TheForge] Semantics 'packing' vs 'distortion'

[Erik Gutfeldt]

On Nov 11, 2005, at 7:00 AM, Bruce Freeman wrote:

> When you talk about atoms and crystals, "compressing" doesn't  
> compute.  "Distorting", especially with metal crystals DOES make sense

This sort of thing happens all the time. Isn't this just semantics?  
As a chemist, packing an essentially incompressible material makes no  
sense. I majored in Physics and really notice when folks mix up  
kinetic energy and velocity of a hammer head ;)

But that's just it. 'Compressing' or 'Energy' have very precise  
meanings within certain disciplines, but not necessarily to folks in  
general. In the case of energy, I'm pretty sure physicists didn't  
invent the word. They just gave the word a precise meaning.

Think about how people call cold formed and welded mild steel  
"wrought iron". Or the history behind the names of 'pure iron' (no  
carbon) vs 'cast iron' (lots of carbon), where 'steel' lies right in  
between (carbon content 'just right', but it isn't 'iron').

Anyhow. My point was that the process called 'packing' might be a  
really useful procedure. Eg. reducing grain size to toughen steel. So  
I guess I took it too strongly when someone said packing a knife edge  
was "Pure nonsense".

Erik