Wood anatomy (3) softwood cutting planes

[0:10]So if we look at a tree trunk now, a schematic, and we've got the growth rings running around like that. We can look at different axes and different planes in this tree, and each axis has got a name. So if we got a a trunk like this, and we have the vertical axis, which is the growth direction, that is called the longitudinal axis. So that is an axis. And then we can have an axis coming out in this direction, and that is obviously the radius of that circle, so we call that the radial axis. And then we have a tangent to that radius. So we call that a tangential axis or direction. So these are the axes and then from each axis, an axis is a one-dimensional object, we can make two-dimensional planes. So we can have a longitudinal radial plane. So that would be, if we draw the tree trunk again, like this. So that plane, the longitudinal radial plane, looks like that. Or we can have a tangential plane. So that would be a tangential. Hold on, get it right. That's another radio. A tangential longitudinal plane. And then we can have running across there. That is referred to as a transverse plane. And obviously, the wood's going to look different depending on which direction we're looking at. So if we've got this plane here, which is the radial longitudinal. If we look, if we took a section of wood from that and looked at it, we would see all the growth rings looking in this direction, like that. And then in that structure, we might see the ray cells running in this direction as well. And depending on the type of wood, the ray cells would either be very prominent or they would be hardly visible. So something like this, where you just see what are called ray flakes, not much in the way of patterning, that would be typical of a softwood. So that is the radial longitudinal plane. So if we look at a tangential longitudinal plane in the same piece of wood, that's going to look very much like this, a piece of wood. And then if it's a softwood, the ray cells are going to be these uniseriate, so again, they're not going to be very visible. So that's the sort of appearance we're going to have with a piece of wood taken in that direction. And then the transverse, of course, we're going to see the wood's going to look like this, because we're looking at the growth rings from the top.