Obsidian - a type of volcanic glass - can produce cutting edges many times finer than even the best steel scalpels.Īt 30 angstroms - a unit of measurement equal to one hundred millionth of a centimeter - an obsidian scalpel can rival diamond in the fineness of its edge. It could even have been a form of emergency surgery for battle wounds.īut while there is still conjecture about the real reasons behind the mysterious procedure, what is known is that the implement often used to carry out the primitive surgery was made from one of the sharpest substances found in nature: obsidian. In Neolithic times, trepanation - or drilling a hole into the skull - was thought to be a cure for everything from epilepsy to migraines. Please hit like if you learnt something from this article.Статьи на английском → How Stone Age blades are still cutting it in modern surgeryĮver had a headache so big, you felt like drilling a hole in your head to let the pain out? But obsidian blades are still better in terms of durability. Of course synthetic diamond blades have been made. Green, associate professor of family practice at the Medical Center, uses obsidian knives for removing moles and repairing torn earlobes. Studies say that cuts made using these blades get healed much faster than the ones made by steel blades because obsidian blades can make extremely narrow cuts between the cells, and not tear the cells apart. While blade edges made out of obsidian are not approved by the FDA, surgeon scalpels are still made using them. Right: Steel point under an electron microscope. Left: Obsidian tip under and electron microscope. Good quality blades can make cuts down to single molecules! That is about 500 times sharper than the sharpest steel blade. Their edges, if made carefully using processes like pressure flaking process, can get up to 3 nm thick. These were the reason, our ancient palaeolithic ancestors used to chip these rocks and made them as the tips of their spears and arrows.īlade edges made out of obsidian are so sharp that they don’t seem jagged even when seen under an electron microscope. Also, even if they are brittle, they are pretty durable in a sense that they can hold their edge for much longer times. These edges can sometimes get much much sharper than your normal steel blades. When it breaks, it forms very sharp edges. So, if it isn’t handled with good care, it breaks pretty easily. It is very hard and of course, like most hard things are, it is brittle too. Obsidian is a naturally occurring black volcanic glass. Thank goodness, blades can get much finer. Yes, even those seemingly perfect Gillette blades can be that jagged under high magnification. Look at what a Gillette blade looks like when its put under an electron microscope (at not even a very high magnification – 150x). Still, when it comes to fine tools, steel blades stand nowhere. Thus, the steel blades can give you a clean cut. The point is, electric shaver blades aren’t too sharp, while fixed blade steel razors are pretty sharp. So, even if the major thing that causes a messed up strand is due to the fast moving blade of an electric razor, but one other important factor is the sharpness of the blade. The left one was cut using a fixed blade and the right one was cut using an electric razor. Here is a highly magnified image (using a scanning electron microscope) of two strands of hair. So, I almost never have to use a fixed blade razor for shaving my facial hair, but after seeing this, I think I should start using a fixed blade. Normally, the electric shaver gets the work done.
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