05-16-2018, 03:08 PM | #11 | |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Monomolecular blades
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Sinclair chain could also be braided, which is a curious property for the universal slicer to have :) |
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05-16-2018, 03:18 PM | #12 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
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Re: Monomolecular blades
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Another example was Ringworld shadow square wire, but I don't think how it worked was ever described.
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-- Burma! |
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05-16-2018, 03:54 PM | #13 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Saskatoon, SK, Canada
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Re: Monomolecular blades
I was including that in "easy to control", yeah. Really, that's the only thing the stasis field added to the wire's controllability, I think. The only other thing the variable sword added was a little red ball at the end of the wire, so you could see where it ended, and that's not part of the stasis field.
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05-16-2018, 06:20 PM | #14 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Monomolecular blades
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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.
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-- MA Lloyd |
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05-16-2018, 06:51 PM | #15 | |
Join Date: Mar 2013
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Re: Monomolecular blades
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05-16-2018, 07:22 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Monomolecular blades
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Fred Brackin |
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05-16-2018, 07:55 PM | #17 | |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: Monomolecular blades
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* Were 'Sinclair molecules' in Ringworld (1970) or Ringworld Engineers (1979)? |
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05-16-2018, 07:57 PM | #18 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Monomolecular blades
I first remember them from a Bbeowulf Schaeffer short story. Stasis swords go all the way back into the 60s.
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Fred Brackin |
05-16-2018, 08:02 PM | #19 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
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Re: Monomolecular blades
I think they were in A Gift From Earth (1968), if not earlier.
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-- Burma! |
05-16-2018, 08:11 PM | #20 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Monomolecular blades
Mono weapons are as much superscience as light sabers. They also should be a lot more dangerous to their users than light sabers because there is no way that a normal human can see the mono wire, as it is one atom thick. The fact that they do not look cool probably doomed them when it came to the movies.
One possibly realistic alternative though would be a triangular carbon nanotube wire with sides one hundred micrometers long. It would be strong enough to be a weapon and you could actually see it. Each point of the triangle could be 1 nanometer in thickness. The utility of the weapon would be in the creation of a superior lasso rather than the creation of a superior blade or lasso. When the carbon nanotube wire wraps around a target, it would cut into the target until the target was cut in half. Of course, untangling it afterwards would be nearly impossible, so the wire would have to be disposable (and would presumably have something that would allow it to decay to prevent hazardous conditions). |
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