Well as a structural material gold is not good due to most metals being better in every way but for example gold has a tensile strenght of 120MPa while for wood 120MPa seems to be the upper limit after a bit of googling(varies wildly by species, density, moisture and perhaps most importantly grain orientation) so in the context of a same size/thickness etc violin i would wager that the gold one would be quite bit harder to break than the wooden one
The problem is not that either breaks, it is that gold will simply yield (deform permanently) easily. Note that 120 MPa is for volume (cross section), where gold is indeed slightly better (I assumed it would be worse).
However, if you make it thinner than the wood reference, the stress goes up, quickly making it weaker than the wood reference. On a side note, per weight the relevant value is the [en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/specific_strenght](specific strength), where you will find wood way above copper, which is about like gold. Pine wood is even above most alloys because of its low density.
Since when is gold a better structural material than wood?
Well as a structural material gold is not good due to most metals being better in every way but for example gold has a tensile strenght of 120MPa while for wood 120MPa seems to be the upper limit after a bit of googling(varies wildly by species, density, moisture and perhaps most importantly grain orientation) so in the context of a same size/thickness etc violin i would wager that the gold one would be quite bit harder to break than the wooden one
The problem is not that either breaks, it is that gold will simply yield (deform permanently) easily. Note that 120 MPa is for volume (cross section), where gold is indeed slightly better (I assumed it would be worse).
However, if you make it thinner than the wood reference, the stress goes up, quickly making it weaker than the wood reference. On a side note, per weight the relevant value is the [en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/specific_strenght](specific strength), where you will find wood way above copper, which is about like gold. Pine wood is even above most alloys because of its low density.