Image of the Day: Hair Strength

A study of eight kinds of mammals suggests that slim hair tends to be stronger than thick hair because of the method it breaks.

Wen Yang, a products scientist at the College of California, San Diego, and associates extended and also broke specific hairs as well as examined them under a scanning electron microscopic lense. Thick hairs with a size of more than 200 μm, such as those of boars, giraffes, and also elephants, had a tendency to divide in a clean break, while thinner hairs from people, bears, and equines sheared unevenly.

The scientists write in their study that they believe the difference in breaking pattern has to do with hair diameter. In thicker hairs, a first tear is small in connection with the hair\’s size. This favors a routine fracture with a clean break. But in thinner hairs, the reasonably large size of the split will create it to tear. The uneven shearing pattern needs more force for the thinner hair to break short totally.

Additionally, the thicker hairs that the scientists examined had a tendency to have even more tiny openings or problems in the strands. The group located that although elephant hair is four times as thick as that of people, it\’s only fifty percent as solid.

\”The notion of thick being weaker than thin is not uncommon, and we have actually located that occurring when researching brittle materials like steel wires,\” says research study coauthor Robert Ritchie, a mechanical engineer at the University of The Golden State, Berkeley, in a news release. \”This is really a statistical point, which is a larger item will have a greater possibility of having an issue. It\’s a little bit unexpected to see this in hair as hair is not a breakable material, yet we think it\’s due to the same factor,\” he claims.