FYI: What's The Softest Material On Earth?

If they all agree on what hardness is, softness just be something less hard?

Yes, standards are good. I would have thought they would have had a definition long ago. I am surprised.

I'm sure they would find Obama brains pretty mushy soft.

gizmowiz,
Just to let you know...Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004...".

While I did not vote for him. He is a accomplished, prior to being President.

I am curious, what is your background sir?

Robot,
His academic records have never been released. Scientifically speaking, with the lack of empirical information, we must conclude that Obama never did any of the things you so casually mention.

What is YOUR background? If you were one of his professors, then please, by all means, enlighten us.

Stompinstu,
I do profess often, lol.....snort.

No, I was not Obama’s college professor. My source information for my above comment came from Wikipedia. So there you go. ;)

Stomp:

http://www.law.uchicago.edu/media

Sure, it isn't about his actual schooling...but I would say that if the university of chicago felt his schooling was sufficient to teach at their school, it is at least equal to those Robot mentioned, if not those exact same qualifications.

There is probably even more to be found out there as this involved about 30 seconds of looking to find.

ANYWAYS:

"Hardness" is indeed incredibly difficult to measure. Even the typical Mohs scale is really fairly inaccurate, and usually is just a number from 1 to 10. This does not allow for any more precision, as it's just built around scratching the material, and its very common for materials to scratch each other. Alternate methods only work on certain materials.

It's also compounded by how you define a material. Is a clump of dirt a really soft material, or should it be considered separate? It would seem easy to just say it's a clump of separate smaller pieces of dirt, but the problem is when you try to draw a line. You can easily work your way up through various sandstones and such and come all the way to diamond with there never being a sudden and clear line.

Just some food for thought:)

There are several well defined hardness tests such as Knoop, Vickers and Rockwell. They work well on metals, ceramics and plastics. The system and standards have been well developed over time and depend upon the depth and shape of penetration of an indentation device under a defined load.

However, I can appreciate the difficulity of trying to measure a soft material because these tests were designed for relatively “hard” materials. If I were to suggest something, it would be to test the shear modulus and/or Young´s modulus of the material.

Do the losers that troll here really not have another site they could waste their worthless pathetic lives on? The same morons who cry about a Popsci article about political SCIENCE being too political are the ones who find some way to bash Obama no matter what the article is about. As Robot said, his degrees and accomplishments are well known and well documented. His college records are not public record because NO ONE'S ARE! He is an extremely intelligent man who has done more than trolls like gizmowiz or stompinstu could ever dream of. And now, while Obama is busy running the country rescuing us from yet another recession caused by Republicans, you idiots have nothing better to do than cry and moan because you believed all the blatant lies the GOP told you. You look so silly to us :)