![]() ![]() It holds the protein bundles of the cortex together. “The cuticle looks like a fish scale,” Yang says. The chains are layered together and covered with an outer coating called the cuticle (KEW-tih-kul). They’re contained within an area called the cortex. ![]() “Inside the biggest doll (the hair), there are millions or more of the smaller dolls.” Those smaller dolls are tiny protein chains. “You might example of the Russian matryoshka doll,” she says. Hair’s buffness comes from its structure, Yang explains. If your finger were as strong as a bundle of human hair the same size, that one bag could hold 11,340,000 kilograms (2,500,000 pounds)! She has compared hair’s strength to a finger lifting a loaded shopping bag. She’s performed studies on the strength of human hair. Wen Yang is a materials scientist at the University of California in San Diego. Among the things he’s studied is the physics of ponytails. He studies biological physics - the physics of living materials - at the University of Cambridge in England. They mean that a single strand of hair is about half as strong as a piece of steel the same size, notes Ray Goldstein. In the case of a human hair, 200 megapascals is 20,000,000 kilograms of force per square meter of human hair. A pascal is the amount of mass something can take per square meter of material. This is its tensile strength - how much load it can take before breaking. A single human hair can take a force of 200 megapascals. The challenge would be growing such a lengthy mane in the first place. A prince (or princess) would actually have few problems climbing a rope made of human hair. Science, it turns out, has found that hair is some super strong stuff. (If Rapunzel had such a handy ladder, one wonders why she didn’t just rescue herself.) But there may be a little truth behind a human hair-based escape. ![]() The prince then climbs up that magic hair to rescue his lady love. She unfurls her lengthy locks, draping them out the tower window. “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair,” he calls. In the classic fairy tale, the princess Rapunzel is trapped high in a tower. ![]()
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January 2023
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