Trees on the Hill: The Science of Wood
GS-1153

Links to Course Resources:

Syllabus and Course Guidelines

Quizzes and Tests

Problem Sets

Common Ground Workshops

email the instructor (rhsmith@mcdaniel.edu)

 

Questions about wood? Ask the Wood Doctor.


Newspaper Article about "Trees on the Hill" course 


Pictures of the classes at work.

2000

2001


Wood Identification Champs

Tyler Stewart and Erich Bass - Fall 2000

Identified 20 samples!! Total score 37 

Yearly Champs


Interesting Resources/Sites/Links:

(if you know of other useful sites, please email URL + short description to rhsmith@mcdaniel.edu)

For tree and wood identification

Field Guide to Trees Eastern Region, Elbert Little, publ. by National Audubon Society

Eastern Trees, George A. Petrides, a Peterson Field Guide

Identifying Wood, Brude Hoadley, Taunton Press

For some woodworking sources see the bottom of my Common Ground page

Other Wood Courses -

http://courses.ncsu.edu/WPS202/syllabus.html
great site, online wood anatomy and properties course at NCSU. Much good information and practice quizzes.

http://www.chem.vt.edu/chem-dept/helm/3434WOOD/info.html
good online wood chemistry course (UVT) with much information, lots of good chemistry.
http://www.chem.vt.edu/chem-dept/helm/3434WOOD/WOOD3434.html An alternative entrance to this site, but mostly leads to just the PDF files.

http://www2.mcdaniel.edu/HTMLpages/Academics/Biology/botf99/botsyf99.html Dr. Iglich's Botany homepage at WMC.

http://depts.washington.edu/pse406/40inter.htm
Wood Chemistry course at Washington Univ.

http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/FPLGTR/fplgtr113/fplgtr113.htm
a nice Wood Handbook in PDF format in case you don't want to spend the money of Bruce Hoadley's Understanding Wood (which you should!).

http://www.umass.edu/bmatwt/syllabi/201_syllabus.html
Bruce Hoadley's wood course at U. Mass. Just a course syllabus.

http://www.courses.ncsu.edu:8020/classes/wps319001/wps319_mech.html#Course Syllabus - Mechanics
heavy on the mechanics/physics/engineering side

Useful Resources -

http://dmoz.org/Science/Biology/Taxonomy/Taxonomy_Map/Plantae/
great site, taxonomically organized for all plants. Includes images of trees, leaves, fruit, etc.

http://www.forestworld.com/wow/wowonline_home.htmlWoods of the World - a great database of information about 910 species of woods. Searchable by common and binomial (Genus species) names as well as characteristics. You have to register as a user, but it's free!

http://www.forestry.uga.edu/efr/olddocs/newdocs/html/for97-193-1.html
a gross-feature, macroscopic approach to wood identification. A good place for the beginner to start, if you don't want to go to hand lens, end-grain analysis.

http://www.kestrelcreek.com/Wood.htm
a list of 91 common wood names and their genus. Includes gross features of each type of wood.

http://www.hardwood.org/
simple site that shows common hardwoods and their machining properties

http://www.umass.edu/bmatwt/features.html
a number of interesting articles about wood. Especially scan down and look for the articles by Stephen Smulski.

http://www.pbs.org/wws/
link to Roy Underhill's Woodwright's Shop site. Lots of interesting stuff about Nineteenth Century hand woodworking techinques.

http://www.greenwoodworking.com/
John Alexander's green woodworking page. Plans for English shaving horse and good discussion of mortise & tenon joints. Course listings.