Can a knife be unbreakable but not be able to slice through everything?
September 29th, 2009 | by admin |Like theoretically if someone made an unbreakable knife is it possible that it couldn’t slice through everything? Or is it like the same thing?
If you are talking about hand held knife then breakability doesn’t really help much, it’s more about the forces that the operator(human) can generate.
So, unless with unbreakability you also get infinitely thin blade, somewhere 1-2 atoms thick, you will not be able to cut through many things, e.g. stone, glass, metals.
The one thing that unbreakable knife will have is infinitely high wear resistance and impact resistance. So, in other words you can cut and never need sharpening.
As for the single cut, it’s not much different than having hard blade cutting into whatever.
To give you an example, I can’t cut through the steel bolt with my favorite Busse knife barehanded, but if I use either hydraulic press or the batoning, I can cut through it.
It is exactly the same with unbreakable knives. As long as they have thickness cutting will be a problem, you still need a sheer force to cut through the medium. Even with 1-2 atom thick blade it still have to overcome forces holding medium structure together. Just extra drag and pressure will be removed.
And katanas can’t slice through "anything" either despite of my deep respect to those blades.
3 Responses to “Can a knife be unbreakable but not be able to slice through everything?”
By Cyra on Sep 29, 2009 | Reply
Yes. Sharpening a knife to enable it to ’slice’ manifactures weak points. In fact, if you make an unbreakable sword, since it would have to be either very hard or very flexible, I wouldn’t think it *could* slice through anything. There are exceptions, of course, like katanas. But the principle holds true.
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By Tommy on Sep 29, 2009 | Reply
it would not be able to cut through everything
References :
By Visor on Sep 29, 2009 | Reply
If you are talking about hand held knife then breakability doesn’t really help much, it’s more about the forces that the operator(human) can generate.
So, unless with unbreakability you also get infinitely thin blade, somewhere 1-2 atoms thick, you will not be able to cut through many things, e.g. stone, glass, metals.
The one thing that unbreakable knife will have is infinitely high wear resistance and impact resistance. So, in other words you can cut and never need sharpening.
As for the single cut, it’s not much different than having hard blade cutting into whatever.
To give you an example, I can’t cut through the steel bolt with my favorite Busse knife barehanded, but if I use either hydraulic press or the batoning, I can cut through it.
It is exactly the same with unbreakable knives. As long as they have thickness cutting will be a problem, you still need a sheer force to cut through the medium. Even with 1-2 atom thick blade it still have to overcome forces holding medium structure together. Just extra drag and pressure will be removed.
And katanas can’t slice through "anything" either despite of my deep respect to those blades.
References :