USS Constitution (Old Ironsides)

But they had a problem because the great oaks were what they built the man-of-war with. Why is Old Ironsides called Old Ironsides? The Constitution is the oldest ship in your Navy. Reportedly cannonballs would bounce off. Why was it stronger than the British ships, which were also made of oak?

Student: Different oak.

Materials selection example — white oak (probably live white oak) from North Carolina. Tom uses it to make the point that you "selected different woods for different applications," and that the same oak is still in demand today for *Mayflower II* restoration and Navy minesweeper construction.

It's actually white oak from North Carolina. White oak — live, actually, I think it's live white oak. There's a shortage of it in the world today. It tends to be the strongest wood in the world. The reason it's called Old Ironsides is it was made out of this oak from North Carolina, whether it's red or white or live. Yes?

The HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar, contained 2,100 tons of oak. The USS Constitution — anyone want to know why she's called Old Ironsides? Because she's made with North Carolina white oak. North Carolina white oak is one of the strongest woods in the world, and that's why the cannonballs would bounce off her sides. When they have to repair her, it takes the US Navy — she's still a commissioned ship in the US Navy, the oldest one — it takes the US Navy about twenty or thirty years to come up with enough North Carolina white oak to repair it. It's still a problem.

There are advantages to engineered wood products. I have a beam at the top of my house — it's 80 years old, but to put in solar cells on the roof, they had to reinforce the structure. They took a new beam that was engineered wood product. It was about six inches by 24 inch cross section by 40 feet long. They brought in a crane and lifted this thing into the top beam of my house. Where would you get a piece of wood like that today? They used to build things like the USS Constitution out of that. But we don't have trees like that in the world anymore. We can engineer it, and it's actually a stronger beam than if it was a solid tree trunk that might have knot holes and other things in it.

You could talk about your thesis. She made a presentation in another class and double-dips it. I don't mind double-dipping — I did it all the time. I want you to pick a topic that you're interested in. I was doing this in welding once with a bunch of Navy guys, and one guy decided he wanted to opt out of the Navy when he could, and he wanted to do masts on sailing vessels. Which is not exactly the Navy — they don't have a lot of masts on sailing vessels anymore except the Constitution. Another one wanted to do the failure of the American Airlines flight over Brooklyn that the composite tail rudder came off. What did that have to do with welding? I don't care. This is your chance to tell me something that you're interested in.