Could Your Fingernails Become Sharp Enough to Cut Steel?
Ruining my teenage dream of becoming the X-Man Wolverine, with science
I hate trimming my fingernails. I always want to grow them out, fulfilling a primal instinct to keep my claws ready to defend myself.
Between tool use and our engineered environments free of predators, we don’t have much use these days for claws. But the idea prevails, in comic-book superheroes like Wolverine and Sabretooth and internet memes.
So I wondered: Could we sharpen our nails to razor blades, as sharp as a steel knife?
And even if we could, would they be useful?
Sharpness vs. hardness
A popular YouTuber, Kiwami Japan, has made a career out of creating knives from odd materials. Seriously odd materials, including pasta, or even gelatin. He pours the shape in gelatin, dries it so that it’s stiff and hard, and then sharpens it to the point of being able to slice through stiff paper:
