Quote:
Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen
As I understand it (I am not a material scientist!), the superscience bit isn't in making monomolecular strands, it's in their effects. Basically, the ideas that a monomolecular strand would be a) very strong, and b) capable of cutting through virtually anything are the "superscience" bits.
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Yes. On two counts.
The first is that real chemical bonds are strong enough it's theoretically possible to make a wire with a radius of curvature that's about as sharp as a knife and strong enough to exert a few hundred pounds of force (and thus survive being swung as a weapon by a human wielder), but that's about the limit - nothing that sharp or sharper is going to be much stronger than that.
The other one is that there's actually little to be gained by having an edge with a much smaller radius of curvature than that even if you could. Once your edge is narrower than the distance the *target* material redistributes forces over when point stressed, making it sharper wouldn't do anything to improve how well it cuts anyway.