Time To Stop Trying To Shove Women Into STEM
If you are somebody miserable in the job you're doing, there's a good chance you're in it because you thought you should be -- because your parent was a lawyer and you thought you had to do that, too, just to name one example.
Now, it pays to do something that's practical -- a career in which you can earn a living so you won't be living on a sheet of cardboard on the corner.
But there's this big push to get girls into STEM -- while there's no commensurate push to get women into oil rig work, no complaints that there aren't enough women hanging off the back of garbage trucks.
I think girls -- and boys -- should be shown all sorts of possibilities for their lives early in their school experience. It's sometimes important to encourage a kid to try something they think they might not be good at. However, I don't think kids should be pushed to, essentially, take one for the team careerwise -- which is how I see pushing girls into STEM when it's really not their thing.
STEM fields are terribly hard. If you don't really, really want to be there, well, you're not going to do so well -- and there's a good chance you'll be miserable in a way that leaks through to other areas of your life.
Sex differences researcher David C. Geary and social scientist Gijsbert Stoet write at Quillette:
We've recently found that countries renowned for gender equality show some of the largest sex differences in interest in and pursuit of STEM degrees, which is not only inconsistent with an oppression narrative, it is positive evidence against it.18 Consider that Finland excels in gender equality, its adolescent girls outperform boys in science, and it ranks near the top in European educational performance.19 With these high levels of educational performance and overall gender equality, Finland is poised to close the sex differences gap in STEM. Yet, Finland has one of the world's largest sex differences in college degrees in STEM fields. Norway and Sweden, also leading in gender equality rankings, are not far behind. This is only the tip of the iceberg, as this general pattern of increasing sex differences with national increases in gender equality is found throughout the world.20...We believe that with economic development and advances in human rights, including gender equality, people are better able to pursue their individual interests and in doing so more basic sex differences are more fully expressed.22 The differences in STEM are related in part to student's personal and occupational interests and relative academic strengths. Sex differences in occupational interests are large, well-documented, and reflect a more basic sex difference in interest in things versus people.23 Men prefer occupations that involve working with things (e.g., engineering, mechanics) and abstract ideas (e.g., scientific theory) and women prefer working with and directly contributing to the wellbeing of others (e.g., physician, teacher). The sex difference in interest in people extends to a more general interest in living things, which would explain why women who are interested in science are much more likely to pursue a career in biology or veterinary medicine than computer science.24
Programs designed to steer women into inorganic STEM fields would in effect steer these same women away from the life sciences. Such programs would, in our opinion, only be justifiable if women are not provided a fair opportunity to pursue inorganic STEM fields (for which there is no good evidence). The main argument from gender activists is that inorganic STEM fields are a better choice for women either because these jobs lead to higher incomes or that there is a labor market demand for them. Both arguments are fundamentally capitalist and dehumanizing in the sense that considerations of personal interest are overridden by considerations of societal demand. This is ironic, given that the agenda arguing for more women in STEM seems most popular among left-leaning people.
In any event, on top of differences in career preferences, there are important and largely overlooked sex differences in relative strengths in reading, mathematics, and science.25 Students who are relatively better in reading-related areas (e.g., literature) than they are in science or mathematics, independent of their absolute level of performance are more likely to pursue college degrees in the humanities and enter non-science occupations. The reverse is true for students who are relatively better in science and mathematics than literature.26 This is where the results from Finland and elsewhere make sense. Although Finnish girls perform as well or better than Finnish boys in science, the gap is even larger in reading. The result is that more Finnish girls have relative advantages in reading than science. Most adolescent boys in contrast are relatively better at science or mathematics than reading, independent of their absolute level of performance. Individuals with this academic profile are likely to enter STEM areas, either as research scientists or technicians, and there are more boys than girls with this pattern throughout the world.
During my senior year of high school, my mom enrolled me in computer classes -- DOS and COBOL, I think (though I might not be remembering right) -- in the local community college. I hated them and probably would have preferred being dropped off in a shallow grave filled with live cockroaches to being dropped off at OCC (Oakland Community College) a few days a week.
Hi there.
Crid at February 15, 2018 1:24 AM
Ever notice how the feminists complaining that we need more women in STEM fields majored in gender studies?
Patrick at February 15, 2018 1:38 AM
Stop pushing women into STEM? Misleading title. How about we STOP discouraging young women in high school from using their science and math skills and pursuing a STEM major in college?
"STEM fields are terribly hard." Wow, why not just say women can't handle it and that they should pursue an easier field. Women are just as intelligent as men; men are discouraging them from entering 'their' domain.
MichaelM at February 15, 2018 6:01 AM
I'm going to lay some patriarchy on you:
there's no commensurate push to get women into oil rig work, no complaints that there aren't enough women hanging off the back of garbage trucks
That's because men are expendable, and women are not. And both of those occupations require more than a little physical labor. Feminists rail against the patriarchy, right up until it benefits them. Otherwise, they'd be all in favor of making young women sign up for Selective Service.
Women are just as intelligent as men; men are discouraging them from entering 'their' domain.
You have proof of this? go on, make your arguments. Otherwise, I categorically reject your assertion.
I R A Darth Aggie at February 15, 2018 6:18 AM
Got any proof of that Mangina, I mean Michael?
And by proof I mean something more tangible, and measurable then your histrionic feelings.
lujlp at February 15, 2018 6:22 AM
"STEM fields are terribly hard." Wow, why not just say women can't handle it and that they should pursue an easier field. Women are just as intelligent as men; men are discouraging them from entering 'their' domain.
MichaelM manages to decide this is about women, this "STEM fields are terribly hard."
Nobody who doesn't want to be in STEM -- who isn't driven like a motherfucker to be in STEM -- should be in it.
Michael also seems to be a bit clueless about the countless initiatives to push women into STEM.
See McArdle here on precisely what I'm talking about:
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2017/08/12/ladies_if_a_lit.html
A bit of it:
Amy Alkon at February 15, 2018 6:32 AM
And "on average" tells you nothing about the standard deviation, or any of the other meaningful statistical measurements that could help clarify the information.
Conan the Grammarian at February 15, 2018 6:34 AM
Not buying it.
My sister works in STEM and has for the past thirty some-odd years. As an engineer. No one tried to discourage her. In fact, she was strongly encouraged by her professors when she expressed an interest in going into engineering and heavily recruited by engineering firms when she graduated. Fellow engineering students were happy to have girls in their classes.
This "discouragement" is a fiction feminists have cooked up to explain why girls are passing up fields that require a deep immersion in mathematics to enter (programming, engineering, physics, math).
I went to business school with a woman who had a physics undergraduate degree. Her choice to leave physics was not based on being discouraged from entering a man's field, but based on the job opportunities available in the field - which requires a PhD for any well-paying venture and has limited openings at the top, a quandary which affects equally both men and women in the field.
When one of the business school professors asked if she had encountered pushback in the field from resentful men, she told him no, that she had been encouraged all the way, by professors and students, but that an MBA allowed her to start making money right away and a physics PhD would mean an extra year or two of school, then waiting for a rare opening at a university or foundation.
This. Social Science feminists have no concept of the work required to major in STEM and think the skills, like Harry Potter's or Rey's, magically manifest themselves when needed.
They learn only enough statistics to justify the conclusion they've already drawn and so can't understand the idea that math is more than just balancing your checkbook.
These jobs don't pay as well and are not glamorous. No one is giving oil rig workers and garbagemen stock options in start-ups. No one cares if a female oil rig roustabout leans in.
Conan the Grammarian at February 15, 2018 6:59 AM
"STEM fields are terribly hard."
Well, they are. Let me tell you what happens when you major in a STEM field. On Friday and Saturday night, when other students are partying and hooking up and having fun, you're in the lab, or hiding in the library to do your homework because there's too much noise in the dorm. And even if you weren't, you have no money to party on because you spent it on expensive textbooks and manuals and lab fees. You don't choose when to take your classes; you take them when they are offered, because there's only one section per year. If the class is only offered during summer term, then you stay at school over the summer to take it. You do not have a girlfriend; in fact, you scarcely know any women, because most of the girls on campus regard you as weird and creepy, and you don't have time or money for dates anyway. Yes, there will are few women in your classes. They are so rare that each one has her pick of men -- the ones who aren't already married, that is. On top of everything else, the liberal arts professors blame you for everything that is wrong with the world, and they aren't shy about telling you so. (You have to take their classes, even though none of the liberal arts students have to take any of your classes.) You watch Revenge of the Nerds over and over, and dream of the day that you have your degree and a real job, and you can start to make some money and be part of society and live somewhat like a normal person.
The contention that women are still blocked from STEM fields is laughable. Schools have strong preferences for female applicants for STEM degrees. I saw something last week where an admissions person from Howard University was bragging about the fact that they admit essentially every female student who applies for the College of Science, while rejecting 80% of the male applicants.
Cousin Dave at February 15, 2018 7:13 AM
"Both arguments are fundamentally capitalist..."
This is the one bit they got wrong. Economic freedom is an essential ingredient of capitalism. When certain groups of people are being pushed into certain fields by the government, that implies that the groups who would otherwise be going into those fields are being shoved aside. That's not an economic free choice; hence, it is not capitalism. It is a (somewhat subtle) form of socialist central planning. That's why the Left likes it; it gives them more control over other peoples' lives.
Cousin Dave at February 15, 2018 7:18 AM
"Women are just as intelligent as men; men are discouraging them from entering 'their' domain."
This isn't about class, it's about opportunity. So far as your allegation...
Here is an entertaining specuation about innate differences. Maybe if you look around you'll find the study containing the statistical analyses explaining the outliers when testing for intelligence.
Radwaste at February 15, 2018 7:43 AM
True misogyny towards women is treating them like men.
Snoopy at February 15, 2018 8:37 AM
"Consider that Finland excels in gender equality, its adolescent girls outperform boys in science ..."
I have to ask, is girls outperforming the same as equality? I didn't dig deeper but many people treat those like synonyms.
"How about we STOP discouraging young women in high school from using their science and math skills and pursuing a STEM major in college?"
Every college I've worked with being a girl in STEM is worth about a letter grade. I.e. just by having boobs your work will be graded better. By comparison being black is only worth half as much. Once you get out of college that tends to flip. I.e. being black is worth $10k-20k in increased income and being a woman is only worth half of that.
"These jobs don't pay as well and are not glamorous. No one is giving oil rig workers and garbagemen stock options in start-ups. No one cares if a female oil rig roustabout leans in."
Rig work is for the non-college educated. It pays really well. Domestic workers (i.e. in USA) make ~$45k/year. Offshore is $60k/year. Offshore international is $90k/year. That is starting pay. It goes up with experience. The flip side is work flexibility. Domestic workers have it the easiest. You still work in the middle of nowhere but hotels are available and you can see your family on a regular basis. Offshore is 3 month on 3 months off. I.e. you will live on a boat with 4 other people for 3 months. International is 6-9 months on 6-9 months off. I.e. you will work for at least 6 months without seeing your family. Hence the high pay. I will give you the not glamorous.
There are some US based female rig hands. There aren't many but there are some. There are virtually zero international ones. The risk of kidnapping is already quite high. Adding in the risk or rape and sex slavery is more than most companies can handle.
Ben at February 15, 2018 8:45 AM
There are many reasons why MichaelM strikes me as pompous & unworldy, as a total prehistoric flying doof-asaures, but this will do for now.
(There are other links to these studies in the files from last year: Let me know if you need 'em, Mickles.)
Crid at February 15, 2018 9:14 AM
I come down on Amy as much as anyone when I think she's wrong, but this is plainly taking her statements out of context.
There was nothing in Amy's statement that implied that women couldn't handle being in STEM. In fact, she goes on to say that if you don't really, really want to be in STEM, you're going to be miserable. Since there was no reference to gender in that statement, I understood it to mean that anyone, man or woman, is going to be miserable in a STEM field if they don't want to be there.
Patrick at February 15, 2018 9:27 AM
Yes, my point was that the push for "equality" in representation in specific fields is a push for money and glamour, not a push for real equality.
Conan the Grammarian at February 15, 2018 9:37 AM
My dad said that in his 50+ year of engineering, he hadn't met an engineer yet who at some point didn't want to get out of engineering. So, even if you really, really want to be in STEM, at some point, you won't.
Conan the Grammarian at February 15, 2018 9:48 AM
And "on average" tells you nothing about the standard deviation, or any of the other meaningful statistical measurements that could help clarify the information.
Yes. Additionally, while I suspect that the distribution for women is very close to the normal distribution, it isn't quite so obvious that the distribution for men is just skewed to the right.
In fact, I think the curve is flatter, or perhaps even bi-modal: while there are a lot of genius men, there are also a lot of "here, hold my beer" types as well. Women are much more tightly clustered in that ± 1 standard deviation: not so many outliers.
After a refresher on the normal distribution, I do vaguely recall this:
http://www.statisticshowto.com/bell-curve/
I R A Darth Aggie at February 15, 2018 10:00 AM
The 68-95-99.7 Rule derived from Chebyshev's Inequality. And yes, the rule applies only to a normal distribution.
Conan the Grammarian at February 15, 2018 10:13 AM
my mom enrolled me in computer classes -- DOS and COBOL, I think (though I might not be remembering right)
Given that you're in my age cohort, that sounds about right. Well, not so sure about DOS, it might have been IBM JCL. I didn't fool around with COBOL and I am blissfully unaware if it ran on IBM PC-AT class machine. I'm thinking "no", tho.
I R A Darth Aggie at February 15, 2018 10:17 AM
Social Science feminists have no concept of the work required to major in STEM and think the skills, like Harry Potter's or Rey's, magically manifest themselves when needed.
Which is why I can completely work thru the math on this page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution
Well, no, I can't. Tho I see my old nemeses Gauss, Laplace, Fourier and Bayes make their appearances. Fiends!
I R A Darth Aggie at February 15, 2018 10:24 AM
"My dad said that in his 50+ year of engineering, he hadn't met an engineer yet who at some point didn't want to get out of engineering. "
When I was a cub engineer, I had a co-worker who berated himself on almost a daily basis for not going to law school. "The pay is better, the work is easier, and you get a lot more respect." I don't know about the work part, but the other two contentions are indisputably true. (At least they are for our generation; the pay one might not be true any more for younger generations.)
"In fact, I think the curve is flatter, or perhaps even bi-modal: while there are a lot of genius men, there are also a lot of 'here, hold my beer' types as well."
Yeah, I think it's well accepted that when you are doing stats on behavior characteristics, there will be more outliers, at both ends, among men. Both curves are bell curves, but the standard deviations are wider with men.
The other thing is: Due to the nature of male thinking, sometimes the difference between the genius and the hold-my-beer guy can be hard to discern. Before the Apollo 8 mission (the first one to go to the Moon, although it didn't land), Jim Lovell treated it like he was a terminally ill medical patient: he got all of his accounts and papers in order, and made sure his wife knew where everything was and how to file claims. He did this, he explained to people, because he figured he had about a 1 in 3 chance of surviving the mission.
Cousin Dave at February 15, 2018 10:31 AM
"Given that you're in my age cohort, that sounds about right. Well, not so sure about DOS, it might have been IBM JCL. I didn't fool around with COBOL and I am blissfully unaware if it ran on IBM PC-AT class machine. I'm thinking 'no', tho."
I did some batch with JCL, although most of my mainframe experience was with Univac EXEC-8 (which made a lot more sense to me than JCL, for what it's worth). I took a COBOL class, mainly for the reason that I was working as a tutor for the C.S. department and I needed a working knowledge of COBOL for that. Once I graduated, I never looked at a line of COBOL again.
My first exposure to a computer was with Data General RDOS and Extended BASIC, in high school. (I was fortunate; few high schoolers had access to a computer in those days.) My college work was mostly in FORTRAN V at first, and the C. I knew BSD 4.2 and System V inside and out. Did a lot of assembly language too, on both mainframes and mini/micro computers. One of my favorite jobs that I'e ever had involved writing assembly language for the Zilog Z80. In embedded work, there are still places where nothing but the assembler gets the job done, and I'm the only person in my group that knows any.
Cousin Dave at February 15, 2018 10:38 AM
I don't think I've ever seen or even heard of a interpreter or compiler COBOL on a micro. Not sure I've even seen a line of it after, perhaps, a textbook's by-the-way in the Fortran classroom of 1978.
Crid at February 15, 2018 11:52 AM
I bought a British book on Z80 assembler for the T/S 1000/Sinclair ZX-81. The book sucked, so I gave up after a chapter or three.
Still not entirely ashamed of the failure. It's assembler, fer chrissake. There was a wife to divorce and new tail to chase.
Crid at February 15, 2018 11:55 AM
My point back Conan was that while I agree with you about rig work not being glamorous it pays really really well. The median annual wage for a high school only worker is $30k. The starting pay for a US rig worker is $45k. Well above the median. And the starting pay of $90k for international work is way over that median. For someone with no college education that is a lot of money. The flip side is no one wants to do that work so they have to pay that or they wouldn't have any employees.
Feminist think is more about the glamor than the money. Getting dirty or taking risks are not an option.
"I had a co-worker who berated himself on almost a daily basis for not going to law school. "The pay is better, the work is easier, and you get a lot more respect.""
I don't know that any of that is true. Lawyers have highly variable pay. Engineers there is very little variation. It is the same man/woman argument all over again. The top lawyers make a lot more than engineers. But the bottom make a lot less. I get $118k median for lawyers from the BLS. I get $94k for EEs. And $83k for CEs. So 25% better? I can't say about the work. Never been a lawyer. As for respect, how many scumbag lawyer jokes are there out there? You get weirdo engineer jokes but not a profession known for slime.
At some point you realize any job is just a job. So if you went into it because you had a passion for it (which describes most engineers) when that passion runs out you can be pretty disappointed.
Incidentally, what is a cub engineer? Never heard the term before.
Ben at February 15, 2018 12:07 PM
Aha! I recalled that the outside of it was yeller because I remember the inside not at all.
Except for one clumsy passage near the top, introduced near as follows: "To make this perfectly clear, ...." Well, it didn't. And I knew that day that no programmer would EVER make anything "perfectly clear."
And by the way, when a guy says "STEM fields are terribly hard," isn't he implicitly saying that nothing the sisters prefer to do could ever be so challenging, else his manly encouragement would be required for them to accomplish that, as well?
MMikey knows how to make friends.
Crid at February 15, 2018 12:19 PM
Far as I can tell Fortran and Cobol are only used in some scientific circles these days. Mainly for legacy reasons.
I would kill to use something like a Pentium. But it is just the nature of the beast. When things get hot running a quartz crystal over 20MHz is not really an option. PLLs pretty much don't work. CTE (coefficient of thermal expansion) prohibits any PGA much less BGA packages. Anything with over 64 pins in a QFP won't last for more than 250hrs for the same reason. You get solder cracks on all the corner pins from CTE. Oh well, such is life.
Ben at February 15, 2018 12:19 PM
Anyone notice that aside from Michael not a single lady has commented thus far?
lujlp at February 15, 2018 12:22 PM
Ah, THIS is the tweet I meant to share with MikeyM.
Crid at February 15, 2018 1:37 PM
"Incidentally, what is a cub engineer? "
A just-out-of-school person on their first job. Hmm. Must be a local term. Never thought about it.
COBOL is pretty much dead now. It died with the mainframes. Most of what it used to do is now done by spreadsheets and relational databases (plus a lot more). I haven't seen any COBOL code anywhere since before the Sex Pistols broke up.
Fortran (no longer all caps) is still around, and the language keeps being updated. A lot of the numerical simulation people prefer it to C, because Fortran has rigid rules for operator order of evaluation, which C doesn't.
Cousin Dave at February 15, 2018 1:44 PM
"How about we STOP discouraging young women in high school from using their science and math skills and pursuing a STEM major in college?"
Yeah, and stop kicking them. In the head. With a boot. AN IRON BOOT!!
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at February 15, 2018 1:46 PM
And now that we've bored Amy and all the other readers with this tech yakking... (does that prove Amy's thesis?)
Cousin Dave at February 15, 2018 1:47 PM
"Yeah, and stop kicking them. In the head. With a boot. AN IRON BOOT!!"
Iron is so 20th century. We promise to use titanium-superalloy boots in the future.
Cousin Dave at February 15, 2018 1:48 PM
My husband loves being an Engineer. In fact he loves it so much that he has turned down multiple offers of promotion into management.
Isab at February 15, 2018 2:14 PM
Far as I can tell Fortran and Cobol are only used in some scientific circles these days. Mainly for legacy reasons.
That code is also battle tested. Some of it is rapidly approaching 60 years of age, possibly more. With many years, all bugs are shallow.
I R A Darth Aggie at February 15, 2018 2:29 PM
Ah, THIS is the tweet I meant to share with MikeyM.
Nice graph. But to whomever produced it: please label your axes!! I presume the Y axis is a measure of gender equity, but???
One of my former boss' pet peeve rubbed off on me.
I R A Darth Aggie at February 15, 2018 2:34 PM
In fact he loves it so much that he has turned down multiple offers of promotion into management.
*BORG VOICE*
WE ARE THE MANAGEMENT. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED.
*/BORG VOICE*
I R A Darth Aggie at February 15, 2018 2:37 PM
There may be a bank or two still using COBOL.
Conan the Grammarian at February 15, 2018 2:40 PM
So cliched it's difficult to know where to begin.
I suppose you could start with the conclusion-is-in-the-premise argument, even though he's a PhD. (Try and guess his day job. Go on, try).
Or his constant self-referential book-pimping throughout. Or his creepy attitude toward womyn. Or his broad generalizations of both the ancient past and the doesn't-really-conform-to-his-thesis present.
In his defense he's published in Psychology Today and he knows his readers -- and plays them like a cheap banjo.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at February 15, 2018 2:55 PM
> my former boss' pet peeve
I think the image was cropped, but don't care enough to buy the download and be certain.
Someone might know where to find it on that Kazakh pirate site or whatever...
Crid at February 15, 2018 3:14 PM
I can assure you that as of 2010 there was still a lot COBOL running in banks. And I worked on some Fortran in the late 90s.
When I was in school, women were strongly encouraged and supported in the STEM fields by pretty much everyone -- well the adults.
My niece -- now a senior in HS -- felt that starting around grade 5 that being good at math or science was uncool and so she was no longer so good at these items. Particularly evident starting around grade 8. Mainly it was the other girls...the boys just cared if the girl was cute.
I have also heard that a lot of men in the fields are concerned about getting acused of something and so don't want to work with women or at least in a very stand-offish way.
The Former Banker at February 15, 2018 11:17 PM
"My husband loves being an Engineer. In fact he loves it so much that he has turned down multiple offers of promotion into management."
My dad used to say, of a place he worked at: "They take good engineers and turn them into mediocre managers."
Cousin Dave at February 16, 2018 5:51 AM
My mathematician friends tell me the best female mathematicians are French or Italian. I want to know why the US isn't producing as many as other countries.
NicoleK at February 16, 2018 7:12 AM
"Iron is so 20th century. We promise to use titanium-superalloy boots in the future."
Are you sure you aren't still a cub engineer CD? The point of iron boots is the weight. Titanium is light. Tungsten is the appropriate choice. (Though you might not be able to lift the boot to kick anyone at that point)
As for mathematicians NicoleK, Russia produced tons of great mathematicians. Stalin liked mathematicians. Mathematicians didn't go to the gulag. So there is one option for motivating people.
Ben at February 16, 2018 7:33 AM
Ben, considering that a jet engine tossed a chunk of that superalloy through the wall of a warehouse a quarter of a mile away in Chicago, I don't think I'd want to be in the way of it.
Admittedly, the jet engine is cable of imparting a wee bit more kinetic energy than my leg is.
Cousin Dave at February 16, 2018 10:57 AM
Being properly nerdly though not advanced at it, I looked up computer languages.
Yeesh. Bunches of them. They have to categorize them.
And nobody admits that one of the principal tasks of programming is to guarantee future employment for the programmer.
Radwaste at February 16, 2018 11:01 AM
Feminists seem to want women to become men, even though men are icky monsters.
Men tend to spend lots of time thinking about "things" even when no one is paying them. My friends have an email group where they challenge each other with math puzzles (which also come up at our parties). Have you ever heard of women doing this? We will sit around and debate whether self-driving cars will ever take over, or debate how good the Tesla is, or...
Another aspect of all this is that men think first about the money in a job, not if it is satisfying or flexible or stressful. Men take all the most boring jobs (accountant, computer programmer, mechanic) because the pay is good. Women want satisfaction and flexibility and hate stress.
cc at February 16, 2018 11:22 AM
A power plant tossed a rod a few years back. And by tossed I mean threw a huge steel cylinder over a mile. A bullet only weighs a few ounces and is just as dangerous. So I reject your argument Cousin Dave.
Titanium has a density of 4.54 g/cm3. Iron has a density of 7.87 g/cm3. Almost double. Tungsten has a density of 19.35 g/cm3. Slightly more than gold and I think the densest non-radioactive element out there. Though there is depleted uranium (20.2) and such. I'm not too clear on stable heavy stuff.
For letting someone know they've really gotten a boot to the head I still vote tungsten.
Now don't get me wrong. That titanium super alloy stuff is really durable stuff. Your boots would be able to kick a whole lot of heads without getting scuffed.
Ben at February 16, 2018 11:50 AM
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