Organic Substance As Hard As a Diamond

Probaply you have already heard that diamond is the hardest and most consistent material in the world. Diamonds are made of pure graphite (carbon), and they get the hard and symmetrical structure thanks to the great pressure and ideal temperature. This material has the ideal internal structure.

Diamond is an inorganic substance, but there are organisms that can produce similar hard substances. That biological substance it is strong as steal and it is produced by little marine oysters called limpets. Previously, the spider silk was the hardest natural material in the world.

 

The secret is in their teeth. You would need a microscope to see them. Their teeth are composed of very thin, tightly-packed fibers containing hard mineral called goethite. It is a very hard mineral and it is made from ferric iron.

Limpets use these teeth to scrape the food from the rock. This material had a hardness of 5 Gigapascals, about five times more than spider silk. The secret is in the size of their fibers which are 1/100^th the diameter of the human hair.

Larger structures have many flaws and the chances for breaking are larger than with smaller structure. 

Ultrathin fibers are packed ideally and don’t have flaws. Bigger things are always more fragile than smaller thing. That is because of the smaller cohesion in the substance.

This is real and it is amazing.