Is Oak a hardwood or a softwood?

Answer 1

Oak is one of the hardest woods known. Oak is prized for its hardness and durability. Softwoods include firs and pines. Both hardwoods and softwoods grow in forests in the earth's temperate zone. Most hardwoods are deciduous trees.

Answer 2

Simple answer is that it is a hardwood. But a hardwood is not necessarily a harder denser material than a softwood. For example, balsa wood is light and not very dense and is considered a hardwood. The distinction is to do with plant reproduction. All trees reproduce by producing seeds. Hardwood trees are angiosperms, plants that produce seeds with some sort of covering. This might be a fruit or a hard shell, such as an acorn from the Oak Softwoods are gymnosperms. They let seeds fall to the ground with no covering. Pine trees, which grow seeds in hard cones. For the most part, angiosperm trees lose their leaves during cold weather while gymnosperm trees keep their leaves all year round. So, it's correct to say that generally evergreens are softwoods and deciduous trees are hardwoods. Oak is deciduous.
Oak is a hardwood because the tree is deciduous: that is, it drops its leaves in winter. By that defintion, so is Balsa. The density (or mass) of the wood is irrelevant.

Answer 3

Oak is a hard wood.....