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

Snails' teeth beats spider silk as nature's strongest material (2015)

smithsonianmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 179 posts

Re: Snails' teeth beats spider silk as nature's strongest material (2015)

#81

Post by kulahan »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #26
RajT88 wrote: post #3

> 3,300 one-pound bags of sugar Ah, but how many one pound bags of concrete could it hold?? Why bags of anything? This is a poor way of communicating weight. Just say "a modern passenger car".

How about > 10x stronger than the jaw of a dog > 20x stronger than a human jaw > as strong as the jaws of a great white shark ?

Those are crushing power, and while they use bad terms for it, they are referring to tensile strength specifically, which is totally different. I don’t know why the hell they chose a spaghetti strand though.

Re: Snails' teeth beats spider silk as nature's strongest material (2015)

#82

Post by kulahan »

giwook wrote: post #38
tonymillion wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thats’s comparable to a single strand of spaghetti holding up about 3,300 one-pound bags of sugar Is that cooked or raw spaghetti?

Is it De Cecco though or some inferior brand like Barilla?

Barilla is fine and I will fight you

Re: Snails' teeth beats spider silk as nature's strongest material (2015)

#83

Post by bdamm »

RajT88 wrote: post #3

> 3,300 one-pound bags of sugar Ah, but how many one pound bags of concrete could it hold?? Why bags of anything? This is a poor way of communicating weight. Just say "a modern passenger car".

"A modern passenger car" varies widely depending on what locale the reader is in. A passenger car in Jakarta is not at all the same as a passenger car in Los Angeles.

Can we just use Kilograms?

Re: Snails' teeth beats spider silk as nature's strongest material (2015)

#84

Post by ozyschmozy »

deepsun wrote: post #17
hedgehog wrote: post #14

I wanted to see some pictures, this paper has good ones: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.10332 If you put your finger in front of a garden slug it may try to eat it, it's a very odd sand-paper sensation but I never knew why.

"try"? If it's harder than your skin it means it did, not tried.

A steel door is certainly harder than my skin and also certainly can't be used to "bite" me or puncture my skin (save for crushing it given enough force)

Re: Snails' teeth beats spider silk as nature's strongest material (2015)

#85

Post by zapkyeskrill »

ziofill wrote: post #24

> Thats’s comparable to a single strand of spaghetti holding up about 3,300 one-pound bags of sugar What an odd example. A mid-sized car would have been much clearer.

But everyone knows, by experience, what 3300 individual roughly one pound bags of sugar weighs and what sort of force is needed to hold it up. Mid sized car is ambiguous, and nobody saw anybody hold that up (seeing hulk doesn't count)

Re: Snails' teeth beats spider silk as nature's strongest material (2015)

#86

Post by eth0up »

horacemorace wrote: post #36
hedgehog wrote: post #14

I wanted to see some pictures, this paper has good ones: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.10332 If you put your finger in front of a garden slug it may try to eat it, it's a very odd sand-paper sensation but I never knew why.

Garden snails around seattle will absolutely bite you (teeny tiny bite) and draw blood if you let them crawl around on your skin.

Beware of strongyloids. Or apparently to maintain complexity of taxonomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angiostrongyliasis

Or rat (snail/slug) lungworm

Re: Snails' teeth beats spider silk as nature's strongest material (2015)

#87

Post by natebc »

flippyhead wrote: post #74
ziofill wrote: post #24

> Thats’s comparable to a single strand of spaghetti holding up about 3,300 one-pound bags of sugar What an odd example. A mid-sized car would have been much clearer.

Must be a british thing?

well that's just £3300 then, yeah?

Re: Snails' teeth beats spider silk as nature's strongest material (2015)

#89

Post by hedgehog »

eth0up wrote: post #86
horacemorace wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Garden snails around seattle will absolutely bite you (teeny tiny bite) and draw blood if you let them crawl around on your skin.

Beware of strongyloids. Or apparently to maintain complexity of taxonomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angiostrongyliasis Or rat (snail/slug) lungworm

Any article with headings "Eye invasion" and "Lumbar puncture" is bound to be a good time.

Re: Snails' teeth beats spider silk as nature's strongest material (2015)

#90

Post by Isamu »

RajT88 wrote: post #3

> 3,300 one-pound bags of sugar Ah, but how many one pound bags of concrete could it hold?? Why bags of anything? This is a poor way of communicating weight. Just say "a modern passenger car".

Needs to be 3,300 bags of something I care about. Otherwise you are talking about nonsense or voodoo.
Post reply on HN