New Adventures of Queen Victoria by Pab Sungenis for January 13, 2013

And now… For something completely different…

Maybe she should have been trying Not Being Seen.

It’s all fun and games until some bird craps in your eye.

The bird wasn’t pinin’ for the fjords.

Ah! Quercus maximus Bamber Gascoigneii

hahahaahahaahaaa

It’s a good thing that’s an oak, saving you all from a Pythonic comment about felling conifers and floating the logs down a twisty river… Oops, too late.Punsman, spare that tree joke!

Reminds me of the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam.

Is that a condor up in that tree?

Your Maj, this is why professional educators deliver their lectures in classrooms instead of under trees.

Shouldn’t she be picking up a shotgun instead of an ax? It’s not like the birds need to be sitting on something to poop on you.

The short answer is that hardness isn’t the only criterion for making a good bat.Oak used to be very popular for baseball bats, and there is still a niche market for it. But ash is almost as hard as oak, and slightly lighter.Hickory is quite a bit harder than either and used to be used for bats, but it’s very dense so bats from it tend to be too heavy. Sugar maple is also significantly harder, and about the same density as ash, but the grain is such that it splinters easily.Hardness is a measure of resistance to denting, not of breaking. Sandstone and quartzite are both silicon dioxide and so equally hard, but as I know from personal experience if you hit a block of sandstone with a geological hammer you’ll break it, while if you hit a block of quartzite you’ll just dent the face of the hammer. The difference between the two is the grain: quartzite is sandstone that has been compressed and heated to the point where the sand grains are fused together.

Apart from the question of whether the difference is a matter of end hardness, side hardness, or grain character, you’re right about oak not being the hardest wood. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janka_hardness_test.

I’m going to see Spamalot week after next. I hope they do a NAQV crossover joke.

Did Queenie turn into Floyd R. Turbo in the last panel?

“Most wooden bats are made from ash. Other natural materials used include maple tree wood, hickory wood, and bamboo. Hickory has fallen into disfavor because it is much heavier than other woods…”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_bat

That probably applies to oak as well, if not more.

…it’s… [cue “liberty bell march”]