April 1st 2005 Science Magazine comments on piano wire "creep"

[kurt baxter]

(note: This is a duplicate of my post on the "string stretching" thread, but
I want to make sure
 it doesn't get passed over by those that have tired of the debate. I
believe this is previously
 unmentioned information.)

For whatever it is worth, I submit this piece of information I recently
found:
-----
 *
Science* 1 April 2005:
Vol. 308. no. 5718, p. 13

Section: "This week in *Science"

*Sneaking a Peak at
Creep

Creep is the slow deformation
of a material that occurs
when it is held under
constant load, such as the
gradual stretching of a piano
or violin string. During
creep in a metal or metallic
alloy, voids form and grow
with time, in addition to
changes in the texture and
orientation of the crystal
grains. Pyzalla et al. (p. 92)
have developed a technique
to monitor all of these changes at once, and they use it to track
creep in a brass alloy. They confirm that the transition from homogeneous
creep to localized deformation occurs late in the creep
process and suggest ways of how other simultaneous diffraction
and tomography measurements may be used to track crack growth
or load partitioning within a composite.*
*

------

That is the entire quote. The paper it refers to ("Pyzalla et al.") is VERY
technical, says
nothing about steel or piano wire, and it pretty much meaningless to my
untrained eye.

However, I fact it fascinating that in an off-the-cuff comment from the
writers of one of the most prestigious
peer reviewed science journals *in the world* simply takes it as
*obvious*that piano (and violin) strings
slowly stretch specifically due to "creep"

Are we seriously suggesting that it is flat out WRONG? I mean, by all means
lets pursue it, because
it would be more than awesome for a piano tuner to point out an error in *
Science* Magazine, but my
hopes are less than high.

Here is the link to the blurb:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/308/5718/13c
And here is the actual article:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/308/5718/92

(free registration is required)



Kurt
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