Ashby plots

So these are the properties. The best way to describe the limits is with Ashby. Who is Mike Ashby? He was from Cambridge University in Great Britain, and he was Lorna Gibson's professor. He's recipient of the Acta Materialia gold medal — one of the great material scientists of the 20th century, at Cambridge now. Ashby plots came out in the early eighties — plotting two properties on log scales. He plotted strength versus modulus, and engineering materials fell into surprising patterns. Reinforced laminates, woods like ash and oak, porous ceramics. All your other woods — ash and oak — make handles. About five orders of magnitude across, but within each family, only one or two orders of magnitude, because each one has a particular type of chemical bond that only varies depending on orientation, like diamond and graphite — electron volts per bond.