Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel

cbc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 168 posts

Re: Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel

#81

Post by rscho »

dafelst wrote: post #15
Tistron wrote: post #7

Fun days for airport security :) How do they handle people bringing caramic knifes today? Would wooden knives display clearly on their scanners?

Getting knives past airport security seems not particularly difficult from the experience of my circle and other anecdotal sources. I've had friends and family accidentally get knives through security on many occasions, and I have also accidentally done it myself. To my knowledge none of them has ever been caught in the converse situation and had to give up a knife. I imagine if one were resourceful and deliberate ab…

I've had TSA confiscate my mini swiss knife (1 inch blade)... #-/

Re: Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel

#82

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

rob_c wrote: post #5
dr_dshiv wrote: post #3

This sounds straight out of a solarpunk scifi story. Beautiful.

Its a shame it's not going to be any more real though. Whilst interesting work if it can be applied elsewhere and with fast growing plants, but it's a bit hyped up based on current limited results.

Also, the process to make a steel knife isn’t really bad. If we were talking about how to make carbon fiber from wood, that would be cool, composites are really dirty to make and do not recycle.

So, cool, but the best use I’ve considered for a wood knife is getting through X-ray, but now you are back to composites being an option.

The market for green circumvention of security measures is probably very small.

Re: Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel

#83

Post by lowkey_ »

Ansil849 wrote: post #58
lowkey_ wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that metal detectors are racially biased?

No. I am suggesting that the discretion of airport security staff about whom to pay closer attention to is. And my suggestion is known as 'profiling'.

Generally, once you get through the metal detector, the knife that was accidentally smuggled through won't be found by a simple body search, if that's your inclination?

This happened to my friend (not White if that's so important to you) when an old pocket knife had gotten stuck beneath the bottom of her handbag. They kept running it through the detector, took everything out of it to check, couldn't find the source, and so eventually let her go.

Re: Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel

#85

Post by csee »

Shared404 wrote: post #73
csee wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be great for ML. A knife detection algorithm that alerts the officer when it thinks it spots one when the bags go in the scanner.

Except then you get delayed because the model decides you have a knife and "the computer can't be wrong".

They search people randomly anyway, and they search people if the human operator thinks they see something suspicious. If we can keep the number of searches constant and just increase the probability of finding a knife, it's a win for everyone.

It's obviously not a win if there's too many false positives, but it's worth a try.

Re: Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel

#86

Post by csee »

nickpeterson wrote: post #69
csee wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be great for ML. A knife detection algorithm that alerts the officer when it thinks it spots one when the bags go in the scanner.

It wouldn’t be a hacker news post if ML didn’t theoretically solve a problem.

I was going to put a disclaimer because of the risk of sounding cliche/ironic/sarcastic, but figured it was a legitimately good idea so I decided to spare people.

Re: Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel

#87

Post by agumonkey »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #80

Cutting cooked meat seems like about the worst possible demonstration they could have come up with because we already have disposable wood cutlery able to easily cut meat that you can readily buy by the hundreds at Target/Walmart/Amazon. The standard food demonstration for sharpness is slicing ripe tomatoes, and demonstrating toughness needs an uncooked winter squash. > "Surprisingly, our wooden knife is actually thr…

Just reminds me that paper moved fast enough can probably already cut meat

Re: Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel

#88

Post by convolvatron »

themodelplumber wrote: post #66
Enginerrrd wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no fan of prepper content, but as an engineer, this criticism seems really weird and misguided to me. There's a reason we use steel in tools and knives. It's very difficult to find a material that can match the properties of steel. Having good edge-keeping while still maintaining toughness and avoiding brittle failure is REALLY hard.

This is conflating people who want or need to use steel with those who don't. Look at the JunkFoodTasterDotCom YouTube channel for example. He always cuts stuff. He uses a plastic knife. He's not an engineer. That is more to my point: Steel isn't needed in a surprising number of knife use cases. I'm not surprised that an engineer wants to speak on behalf of steel and its properties. But that probably won't stop produ…

what?

steel works well. its really cheap - both in economic and physical terms. it recycles perfectly, and if you do leave it in the ground on the water, its not going to harm anything. lasts a really long time, more with care.

seems like a really great design fit. Maybe there are better opportunities elsewhere?

Re: Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel

#89

Post by gameman144 »

csee wrote: post #85
Shared404 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except then you get delayed because the model decides you have a knife and "the computer can't be wrong".

They search people randomly anyway, and they search people if the human operator thinks they see something suspicious. If we can keep the number of searches constant and just increase the probability of finding a knife, it's a win for everyone. It's obviously not a win if there's too many false positives, but it's worth a try.

Is it a win for everyone though?

If we have X cases where people brought knives onto planes, and no notable incidents of knife-enabled violence in the past few years, what's the motivation for reducing X by half?

I'm sure that some would-be-criminals are dissuaded by the TSA, but that seems to already be working today. It seems like a very reasonable outcome would be no decrease in airline violence/crime, but an increase in taking people's property.

All said, if there is still a scourge of knife-wielding criminals on airlines, I'd be happy to be wrong here. Otherwise, though, this seems like it have a very marginally negative impact on the average passenger by taking away their belongings that they accidentally packed.

Re: Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel

#90

Post by cogman10 »

nephanth wrote: post #68
cogman10 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, airport security is nothing but security theater. I wish we could eliminate it.

Theater can act as a deterrent though

Only so long as it isn't known to be theater.

Consider, for example, the fact that there is now "pre-clearance". Or the fact that they no longer make people take off their shoes.

Is there not still a risk of a shoe bomber? Couldn't a terrorist get on the pre-clearance list?

Post reply on HN