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The Squid's Beak May Revolutionize Engineering

Posted by kdawson on from the fortuitous-gradient dept.

Ace905 writes "For years the razor-sharp beak that squid use to eat their prey has posed a puzzle to scientists. Squid are soft and fragile, but have a beak as dense as rock and sharp enough to break through hard shells. Scientists have long wondered why the beak doesn't injure the squid itself as is uses it. New research has just been published in the the journal Science that explains the phenomenon. One of the researchers described the squid beak as 'like placing an X-Acto blade in a block of fairly firm Jell-O and then trying to use it to chop celery.' Careful examination shows that the beak is formed in a gradient of density, becoming harder towards the tip end. Understanding how to make such hardness gradients could revolutionize engineering anywhere that 'interfaces between soft and hard materials [are required].' One of the first applications researchers envision is prosthetic limbs."

22 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. Beaks are neat by RockModeNick · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Puffer fish also have a shell-crushing beak attached to a relatively soft base, but they have the advantage of a jaw bone(thought they lack skeletal structures like ribs) to propel it. It still always amazed me how they managed to have such soft lips and skin and yet chew apart snails and other hard shelled foods so fast.

    1. Re:Beaks are neat by Profane+MuthaFucka · · Score: 2, Funny

      Indeed. The puffer fish is not as well known as its cousin, the Babel Fish, but that should not let you from putting a puffer fish into your pocket and letting it get to work. You'll find that the puffer fish is a far better master of the sensual arts, and you'll not again be tempted by a blow job hamster which is, as I am sure you will agree, too little endowed in the lips, and to much endowed with the teeth.

      --
      Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
    2. Re:Beaks are neat by RockModeNick · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Check out the picture if you've got a strong stomach. http://floridakeystreasures.com/diving/puffer.shtml I can't think of a worse creature to make that particular request of... the blowjob hamster, while also terrible(and I hate hamsters, things bite me all the time at work) at least couldn't bite the thing clean off through a Kevlar condom. My green spotted puffer Shakespeare has nibbled my fingers on accident, too, he's only about an inch in length from being able to take bites of me.

  2. No comments? by Lordfly · · Score: 5, Funny

    A front page article with no comments? Really? ...are you all having sex or something?

    --
    hookers and grits.
    1. Re:No comments? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Individually, yes.

    2. Re:No comments? by MdotCpDeltaT · · Score: 5, Funny

      That would only explain a delay of a minute or two.

  3. the other mystery by ILuvRamen · · Score: 2, Funny

    Now if only they can figure out why the "lobster sticks to magnet!" and LOBSTER HAS A BEAK! (if you dunno what that's from, don't hate. Trust me, it's funny)

    --
    Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
  4. Basically it mentions a hardness gradient by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Basically the article says something about a hardness gradient across the material is why the beak doesn't damage the squid itself. Then they say something about how this idea can be applied to manmade materials. Even that idea isn't entirely new anyways among manmade materials. The traditional samurai sword is forged in such a way that the edge is tempered and hardened to hold razor sharpness, yet the bulk of the blade is not hardened so that it doesn't shatter upon impact.

    1. Re:Basically it mentions a hardness gradient by I+Like+Pudding · · Score: 5, Informative

      That's not a gradient. It's a binary transition from martensite to pearlite. Still, I agree that the idea is not exactly earth-shattering. In fact, my kneejerk reaction was "duh".

    2. Re:Basically it mentions a hardness gradient by dbIII · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The sword example is really just about a mixture. You have areas of soft stuff and areas of hard stuff to get properties between the two extremes for the whole. The tricky details are you have exclusively hard stuff on the cutting edge and exclusively soft stuff on the back edge - but the majority of it is just a lot of different layers of stuff that would be too hard or too soft to be useful on their own. A modern parallel is fibreglass - hard glass mixed in with soft plastic gives you something resonably strong that doesn't shatter like glass.

    3. Re:Basically it mentions a hardness gradient by RockModeNick · · Score: 2, Informative

      While forming the base steel of a sword is often done by folding overhard and oversoft steel together as you describe, differentially carburized sword blades work in a similar way to case hardened materials with a gradient of hardness as you move into the material from the outside, leaving the edges, where extra carbon seeps in from both sides, very hard, the surface of the blade very hard, but the core like a spring. This is one of the last processes that can be used before harding a sword blade, and only a blade made by a very good smith with the right type of forge can do it, but the results are amazing, giving nearly the edge hardness found in differentially hardened Japanese swords but leaving a blade with MUCH greater toughness and no tendency to chip on the cutting edge.

    4. Re:Basically it mentions a hardness gradient by RockModeNick · · Score: 5, Informative

      Thats the trouble with traditional Japanese differential hardening, the difference in hardnesses is slightly too great. The edges, while they hold a razor edge well when cutting softer targets, are more prone to chipping than is pleasant, and the bulk of the blade is pearlite, which while shatterproof, does not spring well enough; it's very prone to taking bends rather than snapping back into place like a spring. Don't think I'm calling the process bad or inferior, it's just different than other solutions and has its own set of problems.

    5. Re:Basically it mentions a hardness gradient by florescent_beige · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm not really familiar with swords but I know a little bit about steel. The Wikipedia description didn't make that much sense to me possibly because it's so brief.

      Martensite and pearlite aren't two mutually exclusive phases as such. Pearlite is a combination of ferrite and cementite. Ferrite is alpha-iron, a particular crystal form of pure iron, and cementite is iron carbide Fe3C. So pearlite itself is actually two phases interspersed. In plain carbon steel, pearlite forms from eutectic (.77% carbon) austenite when it is slowly cooled through the eutectoid at 727C.

      Less than .77%C and you get pearlite plus a phase of extra ferrite, more than .77%C and you get pearlite and a phase of extra cementite.

      This is all for steel that is slowly cooled from austenite. If quenched quickly enough, pearlite formation is suppressed (note that pearlite, being two phases, requires diffusion for the C atoms to migrate out of the ferrite phase into the cementite phase). What you get instead is martensite, which is a metastable phase where the carbon atoms remain interspersed through the iron. It is metastable because the carbons don't really want to be where they are and if they can be made to diffuse (by raising the temperature, a process called annealing) the carbons will move and pearlite will form.

      If the quench is not "fast", martensite does not form fully or at all. The result might be less martensite and some pearlite or another form called bainite.

      With all that, you can see why I wonder about the statement that martensite and pearlite are "binary phases". Depending on the quench rate, you can get different ratios of finely interspersed zones of the two material forms. Evidently we would like to get martensite on the cutting edge for hardness and pearlite in the middle of the blade for toughness. That means slower cooling in the middle, which I would assume means coating the center of the blade with clay to insulate it and slow the cooling rate.

      What the effect of putting "clay and iron" on the blade is a bit mysterious, for the iron to have any value I would think it would have to be allowed to diffuse into the blade during the heat treat process. Also it seems that different carbon contents are used in different parts of the blade which does make sense, higher carbon content causes martensite to form more easily.

      --
      Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
  5. Re:Squid = awesome by LighterShadeOfBlack · · Score: 2, Funny

    It sounds simple and obvious enough, but thinking about how to create materials that behave like this one realizes the challenges involved (not that I am a materials engineer and know anything about it.) Forget synthesising the process, I think we all know where this is headed: Squid farming. Why figure out how to do it when nature has provided us with the goods, handily attached to a tasty snack.

    OK, so there may be a few disappointed faces when people get a prosthetic beak instead of a hand. But I'm sure they'll come around to the idea when they think about it a little bit and realise that beaks are awesome.
    --
    Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
  6. Re:Squid = awesome by lilomar · · Score: 2, Funny

    But I'm sure they'll come around to the idea when they think about it a little bit and realise that beaks are awesome.
    My only question is how far up my arm do I have to chop the hand off to qualify for this? I would like to keep my elbow, but if that is the cost of being the first human with a squid-beak hand, I can make sacrifices.
    --
    The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
  7. Re:Squid = awesome by Naughty+Bob · · Score: 3, Funny

    Realistically I don't know if this is so "revolutionary"
    Are you so bold as to question the editorial integrity of /.?

    No, as the headline says, the entire field of Engineering will never be the same.
    --
    "Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
  8. Prostheses by tygerstripes · · Score: 2, Funny

    One of the first applications researchers envision is prosthetic limbs.
    Prosthetic beaks? Seriously?
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    Meta will eat itself
    1. Re:Prostheses by Culture20 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Prosthetic beaks? Seriously? Haven't you ever wanted to bite into a nautilus just like an apple? Mmm, nautilus.
  9. Re:Squid = awesome by untaken_name · · Score: 2, Informative

    Oh, come on. I can't even believe you're posting on such a trivial subject. I mean, really, haven't you got better things to do? Everyone knows he doesn't tear out wrist chunks because he grabs a hold of the web before swinging on it. Duh.

    --
    http://xkcd.com/386/
  10. Re:Wha? Let me understand this. by ScrewMaster · · Score: 2, Funny

    Using B to get from A to C is an engineering revolution?

    How the hell did we ever get into space?

    I think it's because we used numbers instead of letters.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  11. Re:I think you mean... by neomunk · · Score: 3, Funny

    Actually, if I understand the article right, the gradient is more like soggy ramen to 3-week old dried-on-the-stove Spaghetti-o. It gets pretty hard on the far side, and cannot be destroyed without the power of Dremel at your disposal.

  12. What about Head Crabs? by jameskojiro · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Does their beak work on the same principle? Does a ce-beaked squid grow it back like a missing fingernail?

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