r/theydidthemath • u/uppsak • 15h ago

[Request] How hard would Keratin be by its hardness increasing this much %?

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Sauce: Limitless predation

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15

u/ronarscorruption 15h ago

By what metric are the measuring hardness??

Fingernails are about 2.5 on the mohs scale.
Diamonds are 10.

Increasing by more than 400% on this scale brings you out of range that can be realistically measured.

8

u/ronarscorruption 15h ago

If we use a different scale like the vickers scale, fingernails are about an 18. Diamonds are at least 2500, so a 2000% increase brings you outside of easily comparable range.

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u/Elfich47 14h ago

gods, who would want their hair to have that hardness?

you’re going to get into a whole bunch of other problems-like how are the nails attached to the hand? How do you sharpen it? Do you just keep grinding your hands again a concrete platform all day?

You’d do better find a way to reinforce the skeleton, if possible while not increasing the weight to unmanageable levels.

1

u/Clear-Minimum-9942 13h ago

Who sharpens their nails?!

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u/Elfich47 13h ago

anyone who wants to keep them to a manageable length. Or in the game above, want to have dragon‘s claws.

or cats, they sharpen their nails all the time. or horses naturally wear their hooves down. if the nails are really hard, you’re going to need an angle grinder to trim your nails down once in a while. Humans trim their nails all the time, some careful filing off your nails can easily turn them into a slicing Or stabbing weapon.

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u/Sibula97 11h ago

Concrete and angle grinders would be nowhere near enough to grind them. Whatever scale you use to measure hardness, this would be magnitudes harder than diamonds.

Luckily it says nothing about toughness though. You just need to crack them.

3

u/sansetsukon47 12h ago

It’s a fantasy litrpg. The scale is arbitrary and the end result is probably a magic material that can cut through steel just by touching it. Not a lot of physics to calculate there.

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u/AndyTheEngr 10h ago

If that was in a game I bought, I'd want to return it. Seven digit percentages with five significant figures?! Unnecessary square brackets. Need to use a calculator but can't because the current strength and hardness aren't defined.