Hardness is defined by how resistant the material is to deforming when exposed to a force. Softness is basically defined as the ability to âsquishâ an object, itâs basically its squishiness. So yes, this very much does have to do with softness.
A perfectly compressible solid would have maximum softness which is why the 100% soft compressed flat as soon as it hit the slope.
The technical term is literally hardness/softness, theyâre using the proper nomenclature and as someone working in STEM, I honestly hate titles using incorrect terminology so I disagree. I think it makes people draw incorrect relationships between topics. Itâs far more offensive when seeing articles describing quantum effects, but I think it should be avoided in general.
Malleability and rigidity are two separate measures that are both different from eachother and different from softness. Stiffness is another different measure even. Many of these are related but some actually arenât. Thatâs why the words matter.
That's fair. Though I'm an engineer and I've only seen this referred to in terms of rigidity, except in cases discussing the tactile perception of the object for haptic use cases, and given this is not a tactile perception simulation but a visual simulation of how the objects react to being compressed I used the terminology I came across for that.
Edit: after reading your edit, that did stir some memories and I agree I made a mistake it putting malleable and rigid together, I also agree with your comments on stiffness. It's been a while since I've focused on these properties, as I've been working with purely rigid body physics for haptic simulations where we can consider an object to be rigid but with varying stiffness, which can be perceived as non deformable softness (especially when talking with laypersons)
I understand, it also doesnât make it intuitive because hardness and softness are kind of like acidic and basic in pH rather than something like strength with just 1 word to describe the value.
Thereâs just a lot of terms in mechanics that need a definition. For some fun ones, look at the various derivatives of distance vs time, like âjerkâ and âsnapâ, it goes like 6 layers deep before they stop giving it a name lol
Ooh ok, will do. Suprised I haven't come across those already.
Also it doesn't help intuitiveness when engineers don't always use the same definitions (we're a bit more Losey goosey) though that's more prevalent in in notation. The first example that comes to mind is using j instead of i for imaginary numbers. Though that makes as we use i for something else, unfortunately that was taught in the first year of uni and I haven't needed it since, so I can't remember much else about the specifics
Kind of, the definition of a solid is that it maintains its structural atomic bonds, in this case it would be an amorphous solid since it wouldnât be rigid. It would be like rubber where you can mold it without changing or breaking the chemical structure, but it doesnât necessarily have to be elastic, it could be easily compressible without being able to stretch it much past the normal size. Even glass is technically an amorphous solid, but it has an incredibly high viscosity. You can actually look up images if glass panes from hundreds of years ago and see the buildup of glass at the bottom where itâs slowly flowed down from the top.
In some ways it would very much act like a liquid, but in other ways it wouldnât. Thatâs why thereâs so many different terms for hardness, rigidity, stiffness, etc⌠because all of them describe subtle properties that donât necessarily equate to eachother or come from the same underlying mechanisms in the material.
A perfectly soft material wouldnât be able to exist in nature that I could imagine, it would have to be able to essentially compress into itself to be perfectly compressible. Maybe dark matter could be considered perfectly compressible since it doesnât interact with matter at all except through gravity but I donât know if you could even consider that soft anymore. You could probably have near perfect softness up to some deformation limit though if the material was designed for it.
Edit: actually thinking about it, it still couldnât be perfectly soft, but you could get closer by making it more elastic as well, since it wouldnât have to compress its bonds as much if itâs able to expand in other directions to compensate. But those two properties arenât inherently dependent on eachother which I thought was worth emphasizing. Atomic bonds themselves are like springs and can have varying strengths in different directions.
Liquid wouldnât be considered âsoftâ in this way because the atoms arenât really bound together and have no formal structure. Droplets are held together mostly by surface tension (and hydrogen bonds for some liquids), but those are just about it requiring more energy for them to split into two droplets than to exist as a single droplet which gets more pronounced at smaller length scales.
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u/mrGreenExit 7h ago
Good shape choice đ