Timber encyclopedia topics

half-timber house, type of construction of the Middle Ages in N Europe, used chiefly for dwellings. Some French examples date from the 12th cent., and by the 13th cent. the building method had reached high development. In this form of construction the skeleton frame of the building, with all supporting and bracing members, was of timber, usually oak. The outside enclosing walls were of wattle and daub, plaster, or brick, the material being used as a filling between the exposed structural timbers. The work of the 14th, 15th, and 16th cent. gave increasing decorative emphasis to the timbers, which had richly carved Gothic or Renaissance ornamentation. Many cottages, farmhouses, and manors in England used half-timber, but in France and Germany it was chiefly employed for town dwellings. Half-timber, used in some of the 17th-century dwellings of the American colonists, proved unsuited to the climate and was soon abandoned for more weathertight methods.

See A. W. Jackson, The Half-Timber House (1912).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Copyright © 2004.
Licensed from Columbia University Press

wood rat

or pack rat

Any of 22 species (genus Neotoma, family Cricetidae) of rodents that are nocturnal vegetarians of North and Central American deserts, forests, and mountains. Wood rats are buff, gray, or reddish brown, usually with white undersides and feet. They have large ears and are 9–19 in. (23–47 cm) long, including the 3–9-in. (8–24-cm) furry tail. The nest, up to 3 ft (1 m) across and usually built of twigs or cactus, is placed in a protected spot (e.g., under a rock ledge). Wood rats are sometimes called pack rats because they collect material to deposit in their dens.

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

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wood duck

Drake wood duck (Aix sponsa)

North American duck (Aix sponsa, family Anatidae); a popular game bird. Wood ducks, 17–21 in. (43–52 cm) long, nest in a tree cavity up to 50 ft (15 m) off the ground; they have long-clawed toes for perching. Both sexes have a head crest in winter. The beautifully coloured male has a purple and green head, red-brown breast flecked with white, and bronze sides; the female has a white eye ring and duller colouring. Ducklings eat aquatic insects and other small organisms; adults prefer acorns or other nuts. Hunted nearly to extinction for its flesh and feathers, it has been restored to healthy populations by strong conservation efforts.

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

wood

Cross section of a tree trunk. Wood is secondary xylem produced by growth of the vascular cambium elipsis

Hard, fibrous material formed by the accumulation of secondary xylem produced by the vascular cambium. It is the principal strengthening tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and shrubs. Wood forms around a central core (pith) in a series of concentric layers called growth rings. A cross section of wood shows the distinction between heartwood and sapwood. Heartwood, the central portion, is darker and composed of xylem cells that are no longer active in the life processes of the tree. Sapwood, the lighter area surrounding the heartwood, contains actively conducting xylem cells. Wood is one of the most abundant and versatile natural materials on earth, and unlike coal, ores, and petroleum, is renewable with proper care. The most widely used woods come from two groups of trees: the conifers, or softwoods (e.g., pine, spruce, fir), and the broadleaves, or hardwoods (e.g., oak, walnut, maple). Trees classified as hardwoods are not necessarily harder than softwoods (e.g., balsa, a hardwood, is one of the softest woods). Density and moisture content affect the strength of wood; in addition to load-bearing strength, other variable factors often tested include elasticity and toughness. Wood is insulating to heat and electricity and has desirable acoustical properties. Some identifying physical characteristics of wood include colour, odour, texture, and grain (the direction of the wood fibres). Some 10,000 different wood products are commercially available, ranging from lumber and plywood to paper, from fine furniture to toothpicks. Chemically derived products from wood and wood residues include cellophane, charcoal, dyestuffs, explosives, lacquers, and turpentine. Wood is also used for fuel in many parts of the world.

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

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petrified wood

Fossil formed by the infiltration of minerals into cavities between and within cells of natural wood, usually by silica (silicon dioxide, SiO₂) or calcite (calcium carbonate, CaCO₃). Often this replacement of organic tissue by mineral deposits is so precise that the internal structure as well as the external shape is faithfully represented; sometimes even the cell structure may be determined.

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

Wood, Leonard

(born Oct. 9, 1860, Winchester, N.H., U.S.—died Aug. 7, 1927, Boston, Mass.) U.S. army officer. He studied medicine and became a contract surgeon with the U.S. Army. In the Spanish-American War he and his friend Theodore Roosevelt recruited and commanded the volunteer Rough Riders. Promoted to brigadier general, Wood served as military governor of Cuba (1899–1902) and organized a modern civil government. After service in the Philippines, he was chief of staff of the U.S. Army (1910–14). Though he had advocated preparedness for war, as a Republican he was passed over for a command post in World War I by the Democratic administration. He later served as governor general of the Philippines (1921–27).

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Wood, Grant

(born Feb. 13, 1891, near Anamosa, Iowa, U.S.—died Feb. 12, 1942, Iowa City, Iowa) U.S. painter. He was trained as a craftsman and designer as well as a painter. On a visit to Germany in 1928, he was strongly influenced by the sharp detail of 15th-century German and Flemish paintings, and he soon abandoned his Impressionist manner for the detailed, realistic manner for which he is known. His American Gothic caused a sensation when exhibited in 1930. A telling portrait of the sober, hardworking Midwestern farmer, it has become one of the best-known icons of U.S. art, though it is often misinterpreted: the woman is not the man's wife but rather the unmarried daughter designated to stay on the farm to assist her widowed father.

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

Wood Buffalo National Park

Park, western Canada. Situated between Athabasca and Great Slave lakes, it was established in 1922; it occupies an area of 17,300 sq mi (44,807 sq km). The world's largest park, it is a vast region of forests and plains, crossed by the Peace River and dotted with lakes. The habitat of the largest remaining herd of wood buffalo (bison) on the North American continent, as well as of bear, caribou, moose, and beaver, it also provides nesting grounds for the endangered whooping crane.

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

Halifax, Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 1st earl of

(born April 16, 1881, Powderham Castle, Devonshire, Eng.—died Dec. 23, 1959, Garroby Hall, near York, Yorkshire) British statesman. He was elected to Parliament in 1910. As viceroy of India (1925–31), he worked on terms of understanding with Mohandas K. Gandhi and accelerated constitutional advances. His tenure as foreign secretary (1938–40) in Neville Chamberlain's government was controversial because of Chamberlain's policy of appeasement toward Adolf Hitler, but Halifax kept the post into Winston Churchill's ministry. As ambassador to the U.S. (1941–46), he greatly served the Allied cause in World War II, for which he was created earl of Halifax in 1944.

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