Monomolecular blades

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2002-12-31 03:21pm

Master of Ossus wrote:Just out of curiosity, how the hell can they have a monomolecular wire, and if they are saying that it a piece of metal that is all one molecule, then why can't ANY metal weapon be described as "monomolecular?"

I took "monomolecular" to mean "monatomic" in this case, although it's true that this is incorrect terminology. Mind you, most metals are not really monomolecular, since grain boundaries represent discontinuities (except for specially cast single-grain metallic objects like jet turbine blades, for instance).

Post by **fgalkin** » 2002-12-31 04:44pm

This idea was covered in Sergey Lukyanenko's books.

Let me sum it up:
The blade constantly dulled from contact with air, hence it has to be constantly sharpened.

In a duel, the guy with the sharper blade wins, since it cuts the other guy's blade.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2002-12-31 05:04pm

fgalkin wrote:In a duel, the guy with the sharper blade wins, since it cuts the other guy's blade.

That is incorrect. If the other guy's blade is harder and tougher, the sharper blade will simply be blunted by the impact. If both blades are made of a high-toughness material, they will both be blunted on impact and the sharpness will be of little consequence.

Post by **fgalkin** » 2002-12-31 05:13pm

Darth Wong wrote:
fgalkin wrote:In a duel, the guy with the sharper blade wins, since it cuts the other guy's blade.
That is incorrect. If the other guy's blade is harder and tougher, the sharper blade will simply be blunted by the impact. If both blades are made of a high-toughness material, they will both be blunted on impact and the sharpness will be of little consequence.

True, but if one blade is blunt enough allow the other one to cut through it (assuming the blades are made from the same material), then the fact that the other blade is blunted by the impact is of no significance, because one of the guys will no longer have a blade, and thus will be killed easily.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2002-12-31 05:17pm

fgalkin wrote:True, but if one blade is blunt enough allow the other one to cut through it (assuming the blades are made from the same material), then the fact that the other blade is blunted by the impact is of no significance, because one of the guys will no longer have a blade, and thus will be killed easily.

Doesn't the strength of the guys holding the blades have anything to do with it?

Post by **fgalkin** » 2002-12-31 05:19pm

Darth Servo wrote:
fgalkin wrote:True, but if one blade is blunt enough allow the other one to cut through it (assuming the blades are made from the same material), then the fact that the other blade is blunted by the impact is of no significance, because one of the guys will no longer have a blade, and thus will be killed easily.
Doesn't the strength of the guys holding the blades have anything to do with it?

Not really. The blade is sharp enough to cut through anything likeknife through butter. If you strike too hard, you will lose your balance.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2002-12-31 05:46pm

fgalkin wrote:True, but if one blade is blunt enough allow the other one to cut through it (assuming the blades are made from the same material), then the fact that the other blade is blunted by the impact is of no significance, because one of the guys will no longer have a blade, and thus will be killed easily.

I suggest you take the sharpest blade you can find and try to cut through a piece of tool steel in order to support your theory that sharpness allows you to cut through high-toughness metals.

Post by **fgalkin** » 2002-12-31 05:51pm

Darth Wong wrote:
fgalkin wrote:True, but if one blade is blunt enough allow the other one to cut through it (assuming the blades are made from the same material), then the fact that the other blade is blunted by the impact is of no significance, because one of the guys will no longer have a blade, and thus will be killed easily.
I suggest you take the sharpest blade you can find and try to cut through a piece of tool steel in order to support your theory that sharpness allows you to cut through high-toughness metals.

This is not my theory. I'm just stating an example from fiction where this matter has been handled. I did not check the science here, I merely restated the author's theory.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2002-12-31 06:00pm

fgalkin wrote:This is not my theory. I'm just stating an example from fiction where this matter has been handled. I did not check the science here, I merely restated the author's theory.

IOW, (drum roll please...) Appeal to Authority Fallacy.

SyntaxVorlon · Post by **SyntaxVorlon** » 2002-12-31 06:10pm

Is it still a fallacy when you are citing the author, I mean monomolecular blades are in use in numerous scifi, and he may simply be saying that he doesn't know any more than the author.
The real idea behind monomolecular blades is that they are so thin that they never actually encounter the other object(assuming this is not another blade) they simply catch on to the atomic bonds in the material and snap them.
When the blade is sharp enough and the user is powerful enough to apply enough pressure to snap the individual atomic bonds. In Niven's novels the blade is a wire with a forcefield around it, the force field acts to sever covalent bond.

But as with fgalkin, I cannot assume any scientific accuracy with this as it was infered from scifi novels and has NO scientific basis. Darth, I'm sure you will provide oodles of reasons why this is an invalid, idiotic statement and that I am an idiot for saying such awful things and tainting the field of engineering and material science.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2002-12-31 06:21pm

SyntaxVorlon wrote:Is it still a fallacy when you are citing the author, I mean monomolecular blades are in use in numerous scifi, and he may simply be saying that he doesn't know any more than the author.

Unless he himself can explain why his theory is right, its still a fallacy to use someone elses credibility to support a theory.

The real idea behind monomolecular blades is that they are so thin that they never actually encounter the other object(assuming this is not another blade) they simply catch on to the atomic bonds in the material and snap them.

Thank you for revealing your level of ignorance. You think atomic colisions are what prevent real blades from cutting each other. No. Its electro-magnetism. And do you know what bonds atoms to each other? electro-magnetism. Try not to make yourself look so ignorant in the future.

When the blade is sharp enough and the user is powerful enough to apply enough pressure to snap the individual atomic bonds. In Niven's novels the blade is a wire with a forcefield around it, the force field acts to sever covalent bond.

IOW, the metal blade has nothing to do with it. It's just another way of describing a laghtsaber like Darth Wong has already pointed out.

But as with fgalkin, I cannot assume any scientific accuracy with this as it was infered from scifi novels and has NO scientific basis. Darth, I'm sure you will provide oodles of reasons why this is an invalid, idiotic statement and that I am an idiot for saying such awful things and tainting the field of engineering and material science.

One does not need to be as highly educated as Mike is to see whats wrong with these arguments. My field is definitely not materials science and I can still see whats wrong with it.

Sir Sirius · Post by **Sir Sirius** » 2002-12-31 06:22pm

SyntaxVorlon wrote:Darth, I'm sure you will provide oodles of reasons why this is an invalid, idiotic statement and that I am an idiot for saying such awful things and tainting the field of engineering and material science.

ROFLMAO!!!
See here For a long list of phobias.
I'm thinking that they could add 'MikeWongophobia - Not neccesarily irrational fear of Mike Wong' to that list.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2002-12-31 06:58pm

This board was never advertised as a safe haven for anti-scientific ideas; see the BBS motto.

Post by **fgalkin** » 2002-12-31 07:55pm

Darth Servo wrote:
fgalkin wrote:This is not my theory. I'm just stating an example from fiction where this matter has been handled. I did not check the science here, I merely restated the author's theory.
IOW, (drum roll please...) Appeal to Authority Fallacy.

The point is, I'm not arguing for the theory, I'm just stating it here, you moron. If its wrong, I don't care, it's not my argument.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2002-12-31 08:03pm

Firstly, when a sword breaks another sword, it's got nothing to do with sharpness. It's that the other sword hit it with enough force to break the blade. This is concussion, not sharpness. This is why Turkish/Arab swords broke much easier when fighting crusader swords. Turkish/Arab swords were much sharper than Crusader swords, but there is something to be said for a heavy edged bars of metal.

On Niven Variable Swords:
OK, what the deal with them is this. The statis field needs a conductor, which is the Sinclair Monofilament. These are actually very similar to the nanotubes that are being developed currently, in both strength and conductivity (Niven was suprisingly close with that one).
The Statis Field itself is a field that runs alone the surface of a conductor and everything within the field runs at a different rate of time. For Slaver Statis Fields (like the ones in Variable Blades and Kzanol's Space Suit) the ratio is several billion years to a second. The reason that monofilament wires don't bend and are so ridged is that they don't have time to bend. They are in a different time, basically their own universe. The field itself is unbrakeable (as it's not really a physic barrier, but rather the point where one frame of time begins and a different one ends). It's also perfectly reflective, if memory serves.
The whole deal is a nanometer or so wide and complete ridged, so it makes a great cutting instrument.

Frank_Scenario · Post by **Frank_Scenario** » 2002-12-31 09:13pm

A piece of trivia that may or may not be relevant to this discussion of blades breaking: in most Western swordfighting styles that I am familiar with (disclaimer: I don't practice any), you don't parry edge-on-edge. When someone slashes at you, you parry with the flat so as to avoid notching and blunting of the edge. This, of course, assumes that your blade is strong enough to survive the meeting at all.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2003-01-01 01:16pm

Frank_Scenario wrote:A piece of trivia that may or may not be relevant to this discussion of blades breaking: in most Western swordfighting styles that I am familiar with (disclaimer: I don't practice any), you don't parry edge-on-edge. When someone slashes at you, you parry with the flat so as to avoid notching and blunting of the edge. This, of course, assumes that your blade is strong enough to survive the meeting at all.

True. During the "Cult of the Sword" hysteria in Japan, the government made videos of ancient samurai swords cutting through the barrels of .50 caliber machine guns. This demonstrated the spectacular craftsmanship that had gone into making such weapons, but the swords did not cut through the barrels of the weapons merely because they were sharper than the other weapon's rounded edge. Instead, they cut through the barrel based on the numerous properties of the steel and the way in which the sword was made. Note that one noted samurai (Miyamoto Musashi) had also once defeated an opponent armed with such a sword using an oar from a boat he had been rowing at the time. These interesting properties of such swords should serve to demonstrate that there is more to the science of cleaving things in half than the mere sharpness of the two weapons involved.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-01-01 01:54pm

Master of Ossus wrote:True. During the "Cult of the Sword" hysteria in Japan, the government made videos of ancient samurai swords cutting through the barrels of .50 caliber machine guns. This demonstrated the spectacular craftsmanship that had gone into making such weapons, but the swords did not cut through the barrels of the weapons merely because they were sharper than the other weapon's rounded edge. Instead, they cut through the barrel based on the numerous properties of the steel and the way in which the sword was made. Note that one noted samurai (Miyamoto Musashi) had also once defeated an opponent armed with such a sword using an oar from a boat he had been rowing at the time. These interesting properties of such swords should serve to demonstrate that there is more to the science of cleaving things in half than the mere sharpness of the two weapons involved.

The Japanese master swordsmen used a layers of hard steel and soft steel, which they folded over on top of one another many times. The result was an excellent crack propagation stopper.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-01-01 02:42pm

Darth Wong wrote:
Master of Ossus wrote:True. During the "Cult of the Sword" hysteria in Japan, the government made videos of ancient samurai swords cutting through the barrels of .50 caliber machine guns. This demonstrated the spectacular craftsmanship that had gone into making such weapons, but the swords did not cut through the barrels of the weapons merely because they were sharper than the other weapon's rounded edge. Instead, they cut through the barrel based on the numerous properties of the steel and the way in which the sword was made. Note that one noted samurai (Miyamoto Musashi) had also once defeated an opponent armed with such a sword using an oar from a boat he had been rowing at the time. These interesting properties of such swords should serve to demonstrate that there is more to the science of cleaving things in half than the mere sharpness of the two weapons involved.
The Japanese master swordsmen used a layers of hard steel and soft steel, which they folded over on top of one another many times. The result was an excellent crack propagation stopper.

The number of layers was something like 7 million by the time one was completed IIRC

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2003-01-01 02:43pm

Sea Skimmer wrote:The number of layers was something like 7 million by the time one was completed IIRC

Exactly. This effect could never have been achieved using a monomolecular weapon.

Perinquus · Post by **Perinquus** » 2003-01-01 07:18pm

Master of Ossus wrote:
Frank_Scenario wrote:A piece of trivia that may or may not be relevant to this discussion of blades breaking: in most Western swordfighting styles that I am familiar with (disclaimer: I don't practice any), you don't parry edge-on-edge. When someone slashes at you, you parry with the flat so as to avoid notching and blunting of the edge. This, of course, assumes that your blade is strong enough to survive the meeting at all.
True. During the "Cult of the Sword" hysteria in Japan, the government made videos of ancient samurai swords cutting through the barrels of .50 caliber machine guns. This demonstrated the spectacular craftsmanship that had gone into making such weapons, but the swords did not cut through the barrels of the weapons merely because they were sharper than the other weapon's rounded edge. Instead, they cut through the barrel based on the numerous properties of the steel and the way in which the sword was made. Note that one noted samurai (Miyamoto Musashi) had also once defeated an opponent armed with such a sword using an oar from a boat he had been rowing at the time. These interesting properties of such swords should serve to demonstrate that there is more to the science of cleaving things in half than the mere sharpness of the two weapons involved.

This is a claim I have heard repeated often, and frankly, I would have to see the video before I will believe it. A .50 caliber machine gun barrel is about 2 inches thick (with a hollow core half an inch in diameter), and weighs about thirty pounds. It is massive. And bear in mind as well, that a machine gun barrel is not soft steel. It is hardened to withstand barrel erosion at high temperatures. I seriously doubt the ability of any sword, no matter how well forged, to cut through such a large, heavy piece of high grade steel.

You may also encounter stories about Japanese officers in WWII who cut machine gun barrels in half with their swords. This claim is so often repeated that it prompted one sword expert, Hank Reinhardt, to look into the matter and attempt to verify it. Here's what he had to say on the matter:

This stunt must have happened several times, because when I tried to track the source, it seems to have occurred on Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Iwo Jima, Tarawa, and several other islands. I have to believe Japanese soldiers have some sort of pathological hatred for machine gun barrels. I have also wondered why they never tried to cut down the gunner.

He never was able to track the story to a witness who can verify he saw it first hand. It was always something that happened to "another guy in our company" or "some guy over in 3rd platoon", etc. In other words, it's an "urban" legend of the WWII battlefield. It bears all the classic hallmarks of one.

The Japanese sword was an outstanding weapon, and their blades were the most skillfully forged in history. They were capable of some extremely impressive feats, as well as having exceptionally well-balanced offensive and defensive capabilities. But the fact is that these days they are overhyped as hell. Again quoting Reinhardt on the subject of hype in popular culture and movies:

...we have been treated to increasingly impossible feats of derring-do -- heroes who leap straight up over 10 feet, who unarmed and single-handedly take 15-20 villains and destroy them without working up a sweat or getting a bloody nose, who can hurl a knife 50 feet into the trigger guard of a pistol. Ridiculous.

If the unarmed impossibilities are not bad enough, we are also treated to the armed impossibilities: Mac 10 submachine guns that fire 300 rounds from one magazine, swords that shear plate and concrete columns and then are struck edge to edge and never take a nick, and knives that cut barbwire with a mysterious twist of the blade. Most of this people see as hype, but for some reason, when the Japanese sword is hyped, everyone believes it...

Students of arms and armor have always regarded the Japanese sword as a very fine weapon. It has good balance, may be well constructed, and it does what it was designed to do pretty well. But it is made out of steel, and has all the limitations of other steel swords. It isn't magic.

For the full text of this interesting and very informative article, go here:

http://www.thehaca.com/essays/hype.htm

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2003-01-01 08:39pm

Personally, a ceramic or metal sword with a small ultrasonic vibrating unit in the hilt would be better (yes, a Vibroblade or Progressive Knife). The blade could still be crafted to perfection, you could sharpen it with lasers or make it from carbon fullerene buckytubes, but the main element to it being superior is that the rapid vibrations of the blade when utilised with the strength and sharpness of the blade will allow it to cut through most all your combat materials.

That or a long buckytube whip with a weighted end. Just be sure not to swing it too erratically, remember Johnny Mnemonic?

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2003-01-02 01:30am

Admiral Valdemar wrote:That or a long buckytube whip with a weighted end. Just be sure not to swing it too erratically, remember Johnny Mnemonic?

Buckminsterfullerene tubes do not bend. You could, potentially, make a club out of it.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2003-01-02 01:40pm

Master of Ossus wrote:
Admiral Valdemar wrote:That or a long buckytube whip with a weighted end. Just be sure not to swing it too erratically, remember Johnny Mnemonic?
Buckminsterfullerene tubes do not bend. You could, potentially, make a club out of it.

My mistake. Well that may be better then since a whip would play hell with you but it would look cool as a glint of ultra thin light reflects off the carbon or graphite as it is and then slices limbs off, yours included.

USENET has some good examples of future blades, everything from zirconium vibri-blades to nitrogen ion treated turbine blade crystals (one of these even uses the cooling vents in the crystal to pass heat from a gas cannister in the hilt so it's a Heat Hawk in many ways from Gundam).

Perinquus · Post by **Perinquus** » 2003-01-02 03:09pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:
Master of Ossus wrote:
Admiral Valdemar wrote:That or a long buckytube whip with a weighted end. Just be sure not to swing it too erratically, remember Johnny Mnemonic?
Buckminsterfullerene tubes do not bend. You could, potentially, make a club out of it.
My mistake. Well that may be better then since a whip would play hell with you but it would look cool as a glint of ultra thin light reflects off the carbon or graphite as it is and then slices limbs off, yours included.

USENET has some good examples of future blades, everything from zirconium vibri-blades to nitrogen ion treated turbine blade crystals (one of these even uses the cooling vents in the crystal to pass heat from a gas cannister in the hilt so it's a Heat Hawk in many ways from Gundam).

In all honesty, I can't see anybody spending all that money and time to develop an obsolete weapon that nobody uses in combat anymore. The best sword in the world is still not as useful as a shotgun or a .45 automatic, and knives do their job quite well enough already. Perhaps, someday they will develop a simple vibroblade, but even of that I am not certain. There's just not that much real need. The only reason you would need anything with more cutting power is for industrial uses, and for that, why not use a laser?

These super-blades seem to me to be little more than an excercise in Star Trek-style, techno wanking.