Obviously you’ve never heard of flex tape
Comment on Sea snail teeth top Kevlar, titanium as world’s strongest material
LordGimp@lemm.ee 1 week ago
I’m real tired of “strongest material” being thrown around. As a welder turned machinist, “strong” doesn’t mean much of anything to me. Aluminum is plenty “strong” but it’s softer than some woods. Tungsten carbide is harder than a coffin nail but you can chip it by looking at it funny sometimes. Kevlar is plenty tough, but it isn’t hard or particularly flexible. There isn’t any super material that will ever do all the things “the best” and throwing around meaningless titles for clickbait feels childish at best and exploitative at worst.
DeathsEmbrace@lemm.ee 1 week ago
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
You’re forgetting that “strength” has a formalized engineering definition, which is the amout of force (not energy or impact) a material can resist before deforming or breaking.
The other 2 properties you’re alluding to are hardness (force needed per unit of deformation) and toughness (energy absorbed before deforming or breaking. All of these are important factors when choosing materials for a particular use case.
The article is comparing the material to kevlar and spider silk, which suggests that they’re referring to tensile strength, which is a proper use case. It isn’t the paper’s fault that your are incorrectly conflating “strongest” with “best”. What’s best for any particular use case is going to be dependent on design requirements.
LordGimp@lemm.ee 1 week ago
And you’re forgetting that the chumps making these engineering definitions are chump engineers who think they’re making parts in a theoretical plane of existence where only their numbers matter.
In reality, everything should be made out of copper nickel superalloys because man that shit is cool af. Frfr if you ever get a chance to mess with aluminum copper nickel you should do it because that shit is borderline mystical.
Tweaker@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Lookout everyone, big brain here has it all figured out. Don’t need any more engineers with their fancy words.
LordGimp@lemm.ee 1 week ago
An engineer made the titan sub. Worked out pretty well for him. Right up until it didn’t.